
The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle - uptown
https://www.dyson.co.uk/newsroom/overview/features/june-2020/dyson-battery-electric-vehicle.html
======
barbegal
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
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
> 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".

~~~
acallaghan
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
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.

~~~
teachrdan
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
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.

~~~
primrose
I’m willing to bet the LCD screens and fancy hardware are a small part of the
vehicle cost, esp. when compared to the batteries.

All software is expensive up front but near zero cost to deploy to each
additional car.

At some number of cars sold the software costs becomes a rounding error.

~~~
mNovak
Except when that software needs more than a microcontroller to run. The
computers Tesla throws into the cars are not super cheap.

------
objclxt
> Electric cars are considerably more expensive to make and manufacturers are
> making big losses on the sale of each car.

This is rather disingenuous. The Model 3 was one of the most popular new cars
sold in the UK last year, Tesla isn’t losing money on those sales. You can’t
do a market analysis that ignores the main competitor.

If I had to hazard a guess, the real reason James Dyson pulled the plug is a)
EV development and tooling for manufacturer is hugely expensive, and b) Dyson
is private, and James Dyson doesn’t want to accept investment or inject his
own capital into the effort.

~~~
stupidcar
Tesla has certainly lost money on every sale to date when you consider what
they have spent designing the cars and creating the capacity to mass produce
them. They may now have unit costs that will allow them to eventually recoup
that money and make a profit, but that doesn't just mean you can disregard all
the initial capital.

~~~
andrewtbham
That's not the way you consider manufacturing and accounting. You consider
gross margins. You don't disregard the initial capital, you consider
depreciation.

~~~
hodder
Right, but while Tesla has positive gross margins, they have never turned an
annual profit (Positive GAAP Net Income).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
This is the same as the people who complained that Amazon never turned a
profit for many years. But it wasn't because they weren't making money per
unit, it was because they were spending it all and then some on expansion.

If you make profitable cars and you want to make profitable cars and trucks
then you spend all your car profits building a truck factory. In cash-based
accounting that looks like losing money right up until the point that it turns
into making twice as much.

~~~
gamblor956
Amazon did turn a profit for many years on an EBITDA basis. They reinvested
that profit in R&D, but they could also have chosen to send those profits to
the shareholders as dividends.

Tesla has not achieved profit on an EBIDTA basis, so it's not even remotely
the same thing.

~~~
jungturk
TSLA had positive EBIDTA in 2016, 2018 and 2019 (and Q1 2020).

[https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials](https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials)

~~~
gamblor956
Tesla had positive non GAAP EBITDA, which means nothing.

------
gorgoiler
Vehicles are weird. I feel like we try to jam all use cases into one, when I
really need three different things:

1/ To go to work and back. Same route everyday. Not very long. Currently use a
bicycle, but I’ve used mass transit for these very common in-out routes in the
past.

2/ Small local journeys. I can’t collect 6kg of wheat from the local farm with
a bike or a bus. Taxi is viable if I could get them to wait 20 minutes while I
hang around the farm, or perhaps I could use two taxis to get out and back,
which seems wasteful and the market for getting a cab from the country back to
the city is challenging vs the city to countryside version.

3/ Long distance journeys. City to city is easy and pleasant with mass
transit. Harder with a family and luggage, especially if the destination is
not in a town or city. Personal vehicle works well here, and it’s getting more
common to be doing long distance journeys from suburbia to non-city
destinations, for me.

It felt like I could do without a personal vehicle for a long time. I bought a
petrol car five years ago and finally live somewhere where I need it as of two
years ago.

Now that we’re all potentially migrating away from big cities (a real trend I
see, albeit anecdotally) I feel like my ideal fleet of personal vehicles would
be:

a/ big lovely slow commute bicycle

b/ local BEV for cargo

c/ something else for long range

What would be fantastic would be to combine b and c. Something where I could
carry a few kg of 18650s for a 10 mile errand range, and load it up with
1000kg of cells for a 400 mile round trip (or 500kg if my parents would foot
the bill to recharge the long-range incarnation of my mythical modular BEV,
something which feels socially unviable with anything other than trips to see
close family.)

~~~
netinstructions
How about a battery electric cargo bicycle? Like a Tern GSD ($$$) or Radwagon
($)?

The tern gsd can carry 180 kg of cargo and has detachable batteries, so that
at least gives you the option of bringing extra batteries for long range. Or
haul people or wheat.

~~~
slfnflctd
I'm a huge fan of the concept of super-lightweight EVs. I still think
something like the ELF
[[https://organictransit.com/](https://organictransit.com/)] is one of the
best ideas in this space, and I hope someone takes over the brand or concept
and figures out how to market it better.

This needs robust offerings for both lower-end and higher-end models, but it's
hard to say which should be initially focused on these days. My instinct is to
go for the low end & maximize volume. There has to be a sweet spot between
usefulness and affordability. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this
thread, designing for modular upgrades would probably help.

------
signamos
Moved company to Singapore to pay less taxes while pushing for Brexit because
UK's lost sovereignty and the "EU tax". Good vacuums but he's a douche.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Good vacuums? Where? Reliability issues and the plastic chassis broke not long
after purchase. I won't pay the premium again, that's for sure.

~~~
cjrp
Totally, have a V-something cordless and the whole thing is just plastic. Even
the hinges and stressed parts on the charging dock, I'm just waiting for it to
snap.

~~~
londons_explore
Their design mantra seems to be "plastic everything".

I could understand if they did it to keep prices low... But they aren't cheap
products.

I could maybe understand it if they did it to keep things light or eco-
friendly, but dysons structural plastic parts are thick and heavier than a
metal equivilent part.

------
uptown
Sadly, will not go to production:

“We never normally show our aborted projects, however, it felt right to give a
glimpse of the Dyson car to show what the team achieved.”

[https://twitter.com/Dyson/status/1268144470589165570](https://twitter.com/Dyson/status/1268144470589165570)

~~~
clouddrover
They claim their batteries are very good so they might end up licensing them
to battery manufacturers.

~~~
giobox
This seems to me to be becoming the standard failed car startup “face save”
excuse. Couldn’t make a car, but by George we can sell some slightly
differently shaped batteries we patented!

I’ll believe it when we see it.

------
mack1001
The only way to be successful with EVs is to have substantial scale and that
scale needs 10’s of billions of dollars, which means public markets or huge
private rounds which also means dilution. Many things that are probably
unpalatable to Mr.Dyson.

~~~
yardie
Sadly, I think in trying to make an EV fit into a market full of ICE cars has
blinded the public, designers, and engineers that a sedan is not the only form
factor an EV can take. Something like the Renault Twizy[0] is an excellent use
of EV tech. And it's technically classified as a moped or scooter.

For now we're constructing 2000kg wagons to move 200kg of cargo and that just
doesn't seem efficient.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy)

~~~
Already__Taken
ALL the early green cars looked stupid like this or ultra futuristic and no-
one wants them. Tesla came a long and made one that just made a good looking
car.

~~~
yardie
And people have also stupidly convinced themselves that what they need is a
petrol powered 4WD SUV that can climb mountains, ford rivers, carry groceries
and commute to work. It must also be capable of doing the weekly cross country
road trip, apparently. This can all be yours for 84 payments of $500/month.

No one wants EVs because of the same stupid question that gets asked and
answered repeatedly, "this would be great, but what do I do when the battery
runs out?"

------
joubert
Canceled: [https://electrek.co/2020/05/18/dyson-cancelled-electric-
car/](https://electrek.co/2020/05/18/dyson-cancelled-electric-car/)

~~~
sailfast
$180K per car to manufacture is really quite expensive!

~~~
matthewfelgate
How did they manage to make it so expensive per car?!

~~~
maigret
Making a car cheap is the hard part. You have so many less known "luxury"
manufacturers who will build cars on demand for tons of money. The scaling and
cost management is the hard part.

------
cityzen
Dyson seems like a company/brand mired in being clever vs. actually creating
anything of practical utility. We have a dyson stick vacuum thing that was
~$300 and it can't even pick up cheerios. The airblade hand dryer supposedly
spreads something like 60x more germs than regular dryers and over 1000x more
than regular warm air hand dryers.

This car thing apparently didn't work out.

$400 hair dryer?

$1,700 dyson roomba competitor?

I guess every brand has its fans but this is one I just don't get. I'll never
purchase another dyson product after being bamboozled with that damn vacuum.

~~~
nicoburns
You might be right about the germs, but the dyson hand dryers are a lot better
at drying than regular ones.

------
henvic
How unfortunate it's not going to production. It probably would be a great
Tesla contender at some point!

------
rsync
There is an idea ... that driver-critical, frequently used information (like
speed, temps, trip odometer, etc.) can be displayed, offset, in the center of
the car.

You can see this "idea" deployed in the Tesla model 3.

This is a clownish, absurd idea that, were it not for _actual, extant
production examples_ would be mistaken for parody ... they would be assumed to
be in jest.

If you are a designer and you think there is any positive value in this
design, find a new job: _you are a clown_.

~~~
sib
As someone who thought that that was exactly the reason I'd "never" by a Model
3, but then bought one and now daily drive it...

I'll say that those things (speed, temps, trip odometer) rarely seem driver-
critical to me.

* When driving, you typically norm your speed relative to those around you, right? You can easily glance over and see the speedometer if you need to if you're alone on the road and worried about speeding (or you could just flick the right-hand control stalk down and let the cruise control engage).

* What temperature is driver-critical in a BEV? If we're talking about internal air temp, if you're hot, make it cooler; if you're cool, make it hotter. Who cares what the actual number is?

* Trip odometer seems even further from driver-critical. It's visible with a swipe from the big screen, but I've only checked it once in 18 months of owning the car; in fact, I've never even reset it. I guess it still exists for a reason (when young, we used to use them as a backup to an inaccurate gas gauge in an old Volvo, but now you have much more accurate info on-screen.

------
kindatrue
The video that says "See the Dyson car on the road" is so strangely fake.

So you're driving down 6th ave away from the Madison Square Garden sign
promoting the Knicks? There's not going to be a double yellow line because
it's a one way street. Perfectly smooth road in Manhattan? Nope.

Here's what the area really looks like:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7487638,-73.9922756,3a,75y,3...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7487638,-73.9922756,3a,75y,355.72h,83.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4bPdERzIHZyr9FeF_cO4Pw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

Credit to whomever thought adding "Modells" would make it look more locally
authentic though.

------
designdesign
Understandable that they don't want to take this on, it's a massive
undertaking beyond a lot of consumer products.

I do wish they could contract out some design or other manufacturers would
consult with them. Reducing distraction with physical buttons on a steering
wheel is so much more thoughtful than tossing in a touchscreen and pushing
everything to software (I realize cars have _some_ controls on the steering
wheel, but it's not enough).

Every time I see a modern car I'm kind of shocked by how distracting the
interior is. At least voice interfaces have improved somewhat.

------
maharajatever
Dyson is a con with a big marketing budget. I had their "revolutionary"
cyclone nonsense for three years thinking I have a great vacuum, until my
cleaner complained that literally everyone else had a decent vacuum cleaner
and mine was useless. I bought a different one - it uses about a third of the
energy, and usability and capability-wise it's on a different planet. And it's
cheaper!

Not to mention the incredibly useless hand dryers in half of UK pubs.

Dyson is the perfect example of how if you strike the right(???) note with
your marketing you can sell any crap at a premium price.

~~~
Smaug123
I don't know which of their hand dryers you're using, but we have the Airblade
V at work and they're great. But you do need to have lots of air pressure;
I've encountered some which somehow don't blow very hard, and they're only a
little better than a standard dryer. You want one that's installed so that you
can feel it flensing you every time you use it.

------
jxramos
I quite enjoyed this exchange at the end

    
    
        I even took one on Blue Peter and demonstrated it to Anthea Turner!
        (embedded video @ 1:48)
        Anthea: What do the manufacturers think of it?
        James: Well they quite like it, but they're not doing anything about it.
        Anthea: Are steps being taken to do anything about it?
        James: Well no unfortunately we need to pass some laws so that people are forced to fit it.
    
    

\--nothing like invoking the coercive power of the state to force things on
others.

------
justin66
It's surprisingly not ridiculous looking. That's the downfall of so many
electric cars.

It's not a _good_ looking car, but so few are.

------
helsinkiandrew
Strange there's no mention of the solid-state batteries, that may have given
it an edge over competition.

~~~
ben_bai
I was hoping on some news on those, too. Only this sentence on the page that's
interesting. Quote: The aluminium battery pack casing was flexible in design
to allow for a variety of possible sizes and types of battery cell solution to
be fitted throughout the life of the vehicle platform without the need for any
significant re-engineering.

~~~
sah2ed
Such a flexible design in a part that is out of view and non-serviceable by
the owner only adds avoidable costs to the total costs of manufacturing each
car.

------
nmeofthestate
The Dyson Mains Electric vehicle suffered from range problems.

------
hugoromano
Can't trust Dyson with batteries, my worst experience ever. Ended my problems
by ordering via AliExpress from China at one-tenth the price bought from
Dyson.

------
Neil44
Interesting how the battery container is a stressed member of the chassis, I
don't think any other manufacturer is doing that.

~~~
natch
In Teslas the battery container also is structural, or a stressed member of
the chassis as you put it.

There are many aspects here copied from Tesla or coincidentally the same,
although he conveniently leaves out mentioning that fact at any opportunity.
For example the lowering of the car at speed... copied from Model S.

~~~
Neil44
Are you sure Tesla batteries are structural? They don’t look it and I haven’t
heard that claimed before. Lowering at speed has been around for a long time
it wasn’t invented by Tesla.

~~~
natch
To your question yes, it’s well known and has been widely covered.

It’s always interesting to me that absence of knowledge of something is taken
as a basis for believing that the thing is not happening.

Lowering not invented by Tesla, fair point. It seems I do the same thing too.

~~~
Neil44
I feel like I know more than most people about it, I've seen Sandy Munro and
Ritchie B Kidd tear them apart and talk about them, I've just googled tesla
battery structural and found nothing. They are a thin metal stamping held up
by a few bolts. The one in the Dyson pics looks like its built into a deep
aluminium floorpan rather than being a separately cased item.

------
scotty79
Photos on this page seem like James Dyson showing off pretty, custom car, he
ordered his people to make for him personally.

------
dariusj18
So many bad design decisions, those seats are the worst though. Good luck
cleaning out all those areas between cushions.

~~~
detritus
Why, they'd have had the perfect accessory for one of their vacuum cleaners to
do just that!

------
awinter-py
I like the part where they project the wind tunnel flowlines on the physical
model of the car

That looks like science

------
JoeAltmaier
Must be some tech than can be repurposed/pivoted? Perhaps offered to other car
companies?

------
matthewfelgate
why didn't they copy the Tesla strategy and start with a high-end electric
sports car?

~~~
hodder
Among other reasons: 1) High end electrics are a very small market that is now
overly crowded: Model III Performance, Model S Performance, Tesla Roadster
(may never be produced, but in consideration of most high end buyers), Porsche
Taycan, Audi E-Tron, BMW iX3, and more announced almost weekly. Almost none of
these will do well given the limited market size for electric cars in this
price range.

2). Dyson is proven and could raise capital if they needed to without a
marketable proof of concept. They could have IPO'd a sub and raised money.
Unlike when Tesla started, electric cars are now proven to work - maybe not in
a profitable business model yet, but they are proven to work. They don't need
to show off a high end sports car to prove this.

------
ycombonator
This is what Apple car would have looked like if Jobs was still alive.

~~~
HackOfAllTrades
And once you got in the car it would lock the doors and keep you a prisoner.

An Apple EV would only charge from Certified Apple electricity. Hell, Jobs
would have required an Apple ICE to only accept fuel from an Apple gas
station.

