As Patent Drawings Emerge, Dyson's Electric Car Takes Shape
Dyson, the UK-based maker of innovative vacuums and fans, plans to launch an electric vehicle in about two years’ time — a promise backed up with over $2 billion in funding and the poaching of former Infiniti president Roland Krueger, who now heads the company’s automotive division.
The fledgling automaker doesn’t want to be an also-ran in the still-fledgling EV field. As the clock ticks closer to a real, physical car, new patent drawings reveal what it may look like.
The drawings, submitted in a late-2017 application but published only this week, appear to show a crossover. Surprised? Probably not. The drawings suggest the first Dyson vehicle will boast three rows of seating, a low center of gravity, and a truncated nose designed to present as little frontal area as possible. Its wheels, like those seen on the BMW i3, may be of the skinny, oversized variety. All of these measures aim to reduce aerodynamic drag, improving range.
The aluminum body Dyson previously copped to helps in that regard, too.
Still, the drawings are just that. In an email to employees obtained by Bloomberg, company founder James Dyson said the patent images are not a sure-fire glimpse of the final product. Rather, they represent “a glimpse of some of the inventive steps” the company is taking in its design process.
If you want to see an artist’s rendering based on the patent images, head on over to Autocar.
The secretive company plans to produce its vehicles in a Singapore assembly plant, though what type of battery will propel the unnamed vehicle remains a mystery. Dyson is very interested in solid-state batteries, said to harness significantly more energy than traditional lithium-ion packs, and has filed patent applications in the past for their design. Still, that technology — touted by the likes of Henrik Fisker — is in its infancy.
To date, no mass-produced electric car contains solid-state batteries.
[Images: Dyson]
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Sir James Dyson, possessor of the fruity voice, supposed patriot of the UK, strong Brexit advocate like any upper class nitwit. So after the vote, he decamps to Singapore, his new world HQ. The vacuums are already made in nearby Malaysia and Philipines, while Singapore is the high-tech home of the V8 (!) electric motor. A real conman who should be in the marmalade trade. By a twist of logic not decipherable to the Brits, he has invented some cock and bull story about making money in the Far east so he can invest in Britain in future. Must be the same logic that saw America's consumer products companies decamp to China to exploit cheap labor and screw their countrymen back home out of a job. Singapore is also to be the assembly point of the Dyson EV. Likely bad design, non-existent quality assurance, approximate assembly, a strong advertising campaign, and maybe in a couple of years you too can have an inoperative Dyson clogging the driveway instead of the broom closet. I gotta say, Dyson has the measure of Musk in the smarm stakes, and 100% less interest in providing employment in his country of citizenship. Cynicism Central and the guy clears $400 million net a year on those rather poor vacuums.
Twist: it turns on a centrally located ball.