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Dyson to make electric cars from 2020
- gigatexal 9y agoI bet it sucks. Hahaha
- DanGPhoton 9y agoPoint of fact, "that Dyson" is Freeman Dyson
- shawkinaw 9y agoI was going to say the poultry brand ... now _that_ would have been surprising.
- weberc2 9y agoTyson?
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoI can see Tyson launching their own line of cars. Their farms and processing/packing facilities are huge - so it stands to reason they would have their own internal intra-site transportation departments that would devise ways of moving people around for the greatest efficiency - and if they decided the company and its shareholders would be better-off with their own self-made line of electric cars for moving people (and chickens) around their farms and abattoirs - and if they discovered it would be profitable to sell these vehicles to the public too - then more power to them! I for one, look forward to driving a Tyson Chickenmobile - it sure beats the OscarMayer Wienermobile![1] [1]: http://www.oscarmayer.com/wienermobile http://www.oscarmayer.com/wienermobile
- colechristensen 9y agoBecause it's ambiguous, Freeman Dyson the physicist who has many things named after him, has (as far as I can tell) nothing at all to do with James Dyson who is the guy with the vacuum cleaner and now car company. If you know much about science, "that Dyson" is Freeman, if you don't, it's James or his company.
- js2 9y agoNot the BBC's headline. Title here should be corrected to "Dyson to make electric cars from 2020"
- criddell 9y agoConsidering the history of bad electrical systems in British cars, I'm not sure I want an all-electric car from them...
- sk0g 9y agoAh yes, maybe no one else should have bothered with making cars, considering the Germans were the first. We would all be driving Mercedes cars!
- criddell 9y agoApparently there are some British car fans here. Ever since Dyson started selling "bladeless" fans, I've been a little skeptical of their claims.
- mkj 9y agoGoing by other Dyson products it'll be damn loud. But I guess it's not so far outside of their expertise, aerodynamics being important for battery range.
- m3kw9 9y ago100,000 rpm redline engine would be one of its selling points
- taneq 9y agoI imagine someone at Dyson heard a comment about an electric car that it "sounded like a vacuum cleaner" and thought "heyyyyy wait a minute!"
- MengerSponge 9y agoThe only way to tell if it's running will be if your dog is losing its everloving mind.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hiven 9y agoIt's been common knowledge he was building a car for a good year or two. I imagine it's going to be very ugly.
- threeseed 9y ago> I imagine it's going to be very ugly. Why ? Dyson has been renowned for having great design sensibilities.
- hiven 9y agoI think they are getting there. The hair dryer is not a bad product really. However I do feel like some of their products still have quite a way to go. The excessive use of cheap plastic with bright coloured highlights aren't to everyone's taste.
- bivvy 9y ago"they are getting there. The hair dryer is not a bad product really" Really, I don't think you know what you are talking about. The supersonic is innovate and in a useful way in how it distributes the heat. Pros love it. And it looks great. "excessive use of cheap plastic" Many people like the modern industrial look. The highest quality plastics are always used. And above all Dyson is about engineering excellence and producing a product that is useful and functions at a new level. You really need to do your reading about the company :)
- mprev 9y agoThe plastic used in the DC41 vacuum cleaner is so flexible that parts of it bend almost to the point of breaking during normal use. Without judging if the plastic is cheap, it certainly feels less solid than they used to, in my experience. Sure, sample of one.
- hiven 9y agoI think you have perhaps been won over by their excellent marketing team. I've been an engineer for long enough to have a reasonable say in the field.
- thecompilr 9y agoSo basically roomba with a driver?
- plg 9y agoit's going to suck
- temporallobe 9y agoWell bad things don't happen in a vacuum.
- plg 9y agoit was worth it
- pasbesoin 9y agoLets home this one doesn't have more suck-tion. ;-)
- pasbesoin 9y agoI guess you have to be a fan of Craig Ferguson. :-/
- gremlinsinc 9y agoDyson needs to make a spherical megastructure that encloses the first 3 planets and uses all the sun's energy.. Not sure what we'd call it ... but I'm sure we could come up with a name for it... (this comment probably belongs on reddit not HN...but I couldn't resist)
- mulmen 9y agoWill it get you 80% of the way to your destination then leave you stranded with wet hands?
- retSava 9y agoI wonder how much of their knowledge of motors and batteries are usable in cars though. The power draw and load characteristics must be very, very different and I don't think it simply scales up. A fan or vacuum motor is basically ramping up, running at constant speed (either fixed rpm, or fixed drive depending on how they designed it), and ramps down. A car motor on the other hand must be able to meet much more dynamic use. Also, the image we get from the article is "we have the motor, now we just need the car" understates how hard it must be to build a robust, safe, efficient, etc, car. (not that I have much experience apart from How it's made, and various factory clips on youtube :) ). At least, he says it won't be cheap.
- retSava 9y agoI can recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8 "Tearing Down the Model T of Our Time - Autoline After Hours 284" and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa5_tudyAF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa5_tudyAF8 "BMW i3 Factory Production Tour"
- hliyan 9y agoIt never actually occurred to me that appliance companies will now have a slightly easier time breaking into the automobile market. It'd be interesting to see a Philips or LG minicar...
- retSava 9y agoDyson might find a niche as a motor vendor to others that build the rest of the car, instead of actually building cars. I can see that as a better thing.
- IshKebab 9y agoThe biggest difference is that Dyson's existing motors are all effectively cooled 'for free' by passing the air that they are blowing through the motor. The biggest difficulty of making a motor really small and powerful is heat dissipation. With a car the motor can't be cooled in that way (at least not at low speeds and not as easily), so I imagine the design is a bit different. Incidentally that is why they don't make wet & dry vacuums - in those the air can't go through the motor so it can't cool it.
- roryisok 9y agoI'm curious to see where he'll go. He specifically said it will be nothing like cars out there, and Dyson products are always uniquely different to the norm. Will it even look like a car as we know it?
- andrewjrhill 9y ago> Will it even look like a car as we know it? If he he hopes for any sort of market adoption it will have to look like a car as we know it. You can still make some changes here and there that push boundaries - but ultimately people want whats familiar more than unfamiliar.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoThis. Tesla was not the first electric car company - but it was the first electric car company that didn't make a car that looked like an electric car. Add a tail-pipe and a front radiator to a Roadster or Model S and you'd swear it was a Lotus (yes, I know...) or Italian car respectively. Meanwhile the BMW i-series, Chevy Bolt and Volt, and even the GM EV1 all look _different_, and not necessarily in an a good way either: I'm surprised the BMW i3 is selling at all considering how much it resembles an oversized preschool children's toy car. I'm not seeing much "dignity" or timelessness in these car designs and it's what led me to believe that the executive management of these companies is somehow encouraging wacky designs to poison the notion of an electric-car being anything other than an impractical silly-looking vehicle only non-style-conscious tree-huggers would be seen dead driving. I salute Tesla for making an electric car that... looks like a car.
- roryisok 9y ago> you'd swear it was a Lotus (yes, I know...) I'm guessing the thing you know is that the Tesla is based on the Lotus Elise but did you also know that the Elise was released as an electric car waaaaay back in 1998? It had a limited top speed of 90mph, a range of 120mph and recharge time of 1 hour.
- Geee 9y ago
- Vanayad 9y agoAnd here I thought you were talking about the Dyson sphere Dyson... heh.
- garyclarke27 9y agoDyson may pull it off because they start with a high end brand and a good reputation for innovation, contrast Nissan Leaf and GM Volt. They are alos good at making very light yet amazingly strong and durable plastic products. I've been wondering whether their v clever bladeless tech could be used for electric planes, I could imagine thrust from this coming out of the whole wing flap and being easily switchable from vertical to horizontal.
- jlebrech 9y agoSomething with electric ducted fans?
- Gys 9y agoThe UK already produced an interesting electrical vehicle in 1985: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoIt is interesting how Dyson engineering is self - limiting. I owned two Dyson vacuum cleaners. The cleaning experience was fantastic. When you needed to empty the réservoir (or whatever the part which holds the dust is called) it was a disaster. The ergonomics were so bad that I always ended up with dust everywhere and twice injured a finger. It is like they were so (rightfully) happy about their motor that they just slapped together the rest.