The £2-Billion Dyson electric car project is dead.
In an email to staff yesterday, Sir James Dyson said it was no longer considered a commercially viable project and the 500 people engaged in developing the car would be relocated.
Dyson had been working on his idea for a groundbreaking mass market electric car for over three years and bought a former UK airfield to set up an R&D base and planned to build it in Singapore.
With costs escalating and no firm date for introduction which slipped back a year to 2021 he tried to sell the project and was unsuccessful, so decided to end the car programme.
However, experience in building the car’s battery pack is encouraging and the company will now consider how they may apply that to other products.
Dyson says his company will “concentrate on the formidable task of manufacturing solid-state batteries” as well as other “fundamental” technologies like vision systems, robotics, machine learning, and AI.