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It seems they really got out of their depth with this project. There are a lot of photos and videos of aesthetic things that (arguably) Dyson is good at such as

It seems they really got out of their depth with this project. There are a lot of photos and videos of aesthetic things that (arguably) Dyson is good at such as the steering wheel user interface, the shaping of the wheel rims and the colour palettes for the paint job. But there is very little evidence of hard engineering, only one grainy video of the prototype car actually running (the other videos appearing to be the car running are definitely good quality renders). As Elon Musk put it "For cars it's maybe 100 times harder to design the manufacturing system than the car itself." and I think as soon as it dawned on them the scale of the manufacturing process to build this car and all the precisely engineered systems they got cold feet. Yes conceptually a car is similar to a vacuum cleaner, there's a motor, a battery, a control system, a chassis and bodywork but they are in a completely different league in terms of the scale and engineering. A car needs to be able to run safely without faults for 8 hours a day 365 days a year whereas Dyson vacuum cleaners tend to have a lot of reliability problems even when using for an hour each week.

adwww 6y ago
They also struggle with the culture of software. From what I've heard from employees, software is looked down on by management and is not really something they 'get'. Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. A good chunk of what makes a Tesla unique is the radically different software and digital user experience. Dyson (the company) are not ready to embrace the fast moving culture that enables that.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  > Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. Good! God help us the day something like a fan or a vacuum cleaner needs "app connectivity".
  - adwww 6y ago
    True. Although, I have a secondhand fan / air purifier of theirs, and in theory the smart features of that are ideal - setting timers, voice control, etc. But it's crippled by poor UI, only supporting Alexa, and an arbitrary limit of how many schedules you can set, etc.
  - fastball 6y ago
    A "connected" fan definitely has its uses, especially if it can sense if I'm in the room or not. "Connected" vacuums are already here, but they're called Roomba, not Dyson.
    - kelnage 6y ago
      Dyson Eye 360: https://www.dyson.co.uk/robot-vacuums/dyson-360-heurist-overview.html https://www.dyson.co.uk/robot-vacuums/dyson-360-heurist-over... Although the connectivity with their app is a bit rubbish half the time!
  - sumedh 6y ago
    We already have app connectivity for the robot vacuum cleaners.
  - acallaghan 6y ago
    A good example of intelligent appliances would be like my Samsung washing machine... It had an error, so I called their support line. They asked me to hold down two buttons simultaneously, then put my phone near the door. It let out a 10s or so digital song, the kind that modems did in the 90s - that gave them an entire diagnostic, age, model etc, and they sent someone around as they knew I couldn't fix it. Pretty amazing stuff.
    - creeble 6y ago
      A counter example of an unintelligent washing machine: My Whirlpool emitted a diagnostic puddle of water underneath it. I Googled the seal, ordered it from an independent supplier, and installed it myself. It is now on its 25th year of use with us, and cost less than $400 when new.
      - MengerSponge 6y ago
        I'm imagining your Whirlpool singing a happy diagnostic song while it wees on your floor
      - teachrdan 6y ago
        While I, too, am using an ancient washing machine in my home, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison. New washing machines use far less water and electricity than their older counterparts. They also remove more water during their spin cycle, reducing the amount of drying necessary. And if your dryer uses natural gas (as mine does), a newer washing machine will reduce your use of natural gas as well.
        troyvit 6y ago
        What kills me is that every feature you mention can be done without needing an app, an lcd, or the cloud, and the same thing applies to electric cars. How much cheaper would an electric car like a tesla be if it didn't have autopilot, electronic keys, and LCDs everywhere? How much more secure would it be without an e-key to unlock it? I hope when I'm ready to buy an electric car I can find something like that.
  - ryder9 6y ago
    sounds like you're experiencing technophobia
- leonroy 6y ago
  > From what I've heard from employees, software is looked down on by management and is not really something they 'get'. Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. That is a surprise - of all the IoT devices I've owned Dyson's products have been the most rock solid and polished. Their mobile apps (on iOS at least) have been absolutely flawless, never requiring me to sign in again and again or having connectivity issues with WiFi. Their appliances also don't seem to do any funny stuff over DNS unlike some of the flakier stuff I've owned (one of which was making 20k DNS requests a day to a non-existent diagnostic server address on the local subnet).
clouddrover 6y ago
Dyson should have gone with another manufacturer's EV platform for their first few cars, like Volkswagen's MEB platform: https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-wants-other-automakers-to-use-its-meb-electr-1832269531 https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-wants-other-automakers-to-us... https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-engineering-behind-vws-electric-car-pla-1829257860 https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-engineering-behind-vws-... It wouldn't have been a Dyson from the ground up but it would have gotten their EV effort started at the lowest cost and they could have worked on their own in-house designs in the meantime.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  If they had gone with MEB, what would they be bringing to the table? Dyson's bread & butter is electric motor design and you're suggesting they outsource that and instead build a shell around someone else's platform? Arguably that's their weakness. Tesla started out with retrofitting their electric drive train into a Lotus Elise, that approach would have allowed Dyson to do what it does best.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    > what would they be bringing to the table? Brand and design.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      So what would be the point?
      - clouddrover 6y ago
        The point would be to get their EV business started at the lowest cost. MEB is a platform, not a car. There's plenty to do beyond the platform. Ford will be making an MEB car. Here are some of Volkswagen's planned MEB cars so far: - VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjvgXWA78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjvgXWA78E - VW ID.4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dh00utug10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dh00utug10 - VW Space Vizzion: https://jalopnik.com/the-volkswagen-space-vizzion-brings-the-wagon-into-the-1840032227 https://jalopnik.com/the-volkswagen-space-vizzion-brings-the... - VW Buzz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKYr9sgxnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKYr9sgxnw - SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evr55WN5XWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evr55WN5XWo - Skoda Enyaq: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTBHGAv5aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTBHGAv5aw - Audi Q4 e-tron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU MEB is flexible enough to work with many makes and models of car. MEB is exactly the sort of platform a company new to the car business would want to start with.
kinnth 6y ago
I'm not sure electric cars are as deep as motor driven cars and obviously Dyson had the manufacturing of electric motors down to a fine art. I am pretty gutted they couldn't get an economy of scale to make it work, even if they had sold 100 at 250k a pop I think it might have grown and they might have followed the tesla model from luxury down to affordability.
- de_watcher 6y ago
  Electric cars are as deep as you make them. I've watched several youtube videos showing disassembling some Zoe components, it's really impressive. Some models use parts of the motor as an inverter during charging.
artsyca 6y ago
Dude! This has got to be the same with software -- with software it's 100x harder to design the process than the software or at least an order of magnitude wouldn't you say?
- tcbawo 6y ago
  My first thought was cooking. It's far easier to make a great meal once than repeatably in a restaurant on an assembly line.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
>A car needs to be able to run safely without faults for 8 hours a day 365 days a year whereas Dyson vacuum cleaners tend to have a lot of reliability problems even when using for an hour each week. To be fair, we're talking about a British car here. The bar is lower.

adwww 6y ago

They also struggle with the culture of software. From what I've heard from employees, software is looked down on by management and is not really something they 'get'. Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. A good chunk of what makes a Tesla unique is the radically different software and digital user experience. Dyson (the company) are not ready to embrace the fast moving culture that enables that.

ForHackernews 6y ago
> Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. Good! God help us the day something like a fan or a vacuum cleaner needs "app connectivity".
- adwww 6y ago
  True. Although, I have a secondhand fan / air purifier of theirs, and in theory the smart features of that are ideal - setting timers, voice control, etc. But it's crippled by poor UI, only supporting Alexa, and an arbitrary limit of how many schedules you can set, etc.
- fastball 6y ago
  A "connected" fan definitely has its uses, especially if it can sense if I'm in the room or not. "Connected" vacuums are already here, but they're called Roomba, not Dyson.
  - kelnage 6y ago
    Dyson Eye 360: https://www.dyson.co.uk/robot-vacuums/dyson-360-heurist-overview.html https://www.dyson.co.uk/robot-vacuums/dyson-360-heurist-over... Although the connectivity with their app is a bit rubbish half the time!
- sumedh 6y ago
  We already have app connectivity for the robot vacuum cleaners.
- acallaghan 6y ago
  A good example of intelligent appliances would be like my Samsung washing machine... It had an error, so I called their support line. They asked me to hold down two buttons simultaneously, then put my phone near the door. It let out a 10s or so digital song, the kind that modems did in the 90s - that gave them an entire diagnostic, age, model etc, and they sent someone around as they knew I couldn't fix it. Pretty amazing stuff.
  - creeble 6y ago
    A counter example of an unintelligent washing machine: My Whirlpool emitted a diagnostic puddle of water underneath it. I Googled the seal, ordered it from an independent supplier, and installed it myself. It is now on its 25th year of use with us, and cost less than $400 when new.
    - MengerSponge 6y ago
      I'm imagining your Whirlpool singing a happy diagnostic song while it wees on your floor
    - teachrdan 6y ago
      While I, too, am using an ancient washing machine in my home, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison. New washing machines use far less water and electricity than their older counterparts. They also remove more water during their spin cycle, reducing the amount of drying necessary. And if your dryer uses natural gas (as mine does), a newer washing machine will reduce your use of natural gas as well.
      - troyvit 6y ago
        What kills me is that every feature you mention can be done without needing an app, an lcd, or the cloud, and the same thing applies to electric cars. How much cheaper would an electric car like a tesla be if it didn't have autopilot, electronic keys, and LCDs everywhere? How much more secure would it be without an e-key to unlock it? I hope when I'm ready to buy an electric car I can find something like that.
- ryder9 6y ago
  sounds like you're experiencing technophobia
leonroy 6y ago
> From what I've heard from employees, software is looked down on by management and is not really something they 'get'. Things like app connectivity are after thoughts and not core to their products. That is a surprise - of all the IoT devices I've owned Dyson's products have been the most rock solid and polished. Their mobile apps (on iOS at least) have been absolutely flawless, never requiring me to sign in again and again or having connectivity issues with WiFi. Their appliances also don't seem to do any funny stuff over DNS unlike some of the flakier stuff I've owned (one of which was making 20k DNS requests a day to a non-existent diagnostic server address on the local subnet).

clouddrover 6y ago

Dyson should have gone with another manufacturer's EV platform for their first few cars, like Volkswagen's MEB platform: https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-wants-other-automakers-to-use-its-meb-electr-1832269531 https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-wants-other-automakers-to-us... https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-engineering-behind-vws-electric-car-pla-1829257860 https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-engineering-behind-vws-... It wouldn't have been a Dyson from the ground up but it would have gotten their EV effort started at the lowest cost and they could have worked on their own in-house designs in the meantime.

cptskippy 6y ago
If they had gone with MEB, what would they be bringing to the table? Dyson's bread & butter is electric motor design and you're suggesting they outsource that and instead build a shell around someone else's platform? Arguably that's their weakness. Tesla started out with retrofitting their electric drive train into a Lotus Elise, that approach would have allowed Dyson to do what it does best.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > what would they be bringing to the table? Brand and design.
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    So what would be the point?
    - clouddrover 6y ago
      The point would be to get their EV business started at the lowest cost. MEB is a platform, not a car. There's plenty to do beyond the platform. Ford will be making an MEB car. Here are some of Volkswagen's planned MEB cars so far: - VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjvgXWA78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjvgXWA78E - VW ID.4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dh00utug10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dh00utug10 - VW Space Vizzion: https://jalopnik.com/the-volkswagen-space-vizzion-brings-the-wagon-into-the-1840032227 https://jalopnik.com/the-volkswagen-space-vizzion-brings-the... - VW Buzz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKYr9sgxnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKYr9sgxnw - SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evr55WN5XWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evr55WN5XWo - Skoda Enyaq: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTBHGAv5aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTBHGAv5aw - Audi Q4 e-tron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU MEB is flexible enough to work with many makes and models of car. MEB is exactly the sort of platform a company new to the car business would want to start with.

kinnth 6y ago

I'm not sure electric cars are as deep as motor driven cars and obviously Dyson had the manufacturing of electric motors down to a fine art. I am pretty gutted they couldn't get an economy of scale to make it work, even if they had sold 100 at 250k a pop I think it might have grown and they might have followed the tesla model from luxury down to affordability.

de_watcher 6y ago
Electric cars are as deep as you make them. I've watched several youtube videos showing disassembling some Zoe components, it's really impressive. Some models use parts of the motor as an inverter during charging.

artsyca 6y ago

Dude! This has got to be the same with software -- with software it's 100x harder to design the process than the software or at least an order of magnitude wouldn't you say?

tcbawo 6y ago
My first thought was cooking. It's far easier to make a great meal once than repeatably in a restaurant on an assembly line.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

>A car needs to be able to run safely without faults for 8 hours a day 365 days a year whereas Dyson vacuum cleaners tend to have a lot of reliability problems even when using for an hour each week. To be fair, we're talking about a British car here. The bar is lower.