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Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

bbc.com

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Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#61

Post by dtwest »

djaychela wrote: post #23

I'm surprised at this - seems bizarre that it's a 'great product' but isn't commercially viable in any way? As an aside, I really can't understand why people are so enthusiastic about Dyson products - I find them to be poor to use and poor performers. My gf has a dyson vacuum cleaner (a v6, I think), and it's terrible. Battery life is minimal, the suction is poor compared to anything I've used in the past, all the no…

> they take about the same time as any other dryer

This is false. Before the Dyson Airblade and the really loud Xlerator ones, World Dryer was the most common hand dryer (in America at least), and they are awful. Forget about 10 seconds, you could stand there for 60 seconds and still want to use paper towels after.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#62

Post by specialp »

djaychela wrote: post #23

I'm surprised at this - seems bizarre that it's a 'great product' but isn't commercially viable in any way? As an aside, I really can't understand why people are so enthusiastic about Dyson products - I find them to be poor to use and poor performers. My gf has a dyson vacuum cleaner (a v6, I think), and it's terrible. Battery life is minimal, the suction is poor compared to anything I've used in the past, all the no…

Dyson really got the bagless vacuums to become the dominant vacuum in the USA. I think while it looks cool and relieving to see lots of stuff whirl in a transparent tornado chamber, it is far inferior to actually having a bag. You then have to dump out a dusty dirt container somewhere (hopefully not inside) and clean and sometimes replace an expensive filter. Vacuum bags are pretty cheap, and biodegradable, and much cleaner to replace. It holds a lot more too before affecting suction resulting in less empties.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#63

Post by jcims »

andy_ppp wrote: post #41
mdorazio wrote: post #22

Add Dyson to the list of failed/failing EV entrants (Faraday, Lucid, Elio, Aptera, ...) finding out the hard way that building a commercially viable car is hard regardless of what its powertrain looks like.

Building a commercially competitive production line is the problem no? Designing of the electric car is trivial I'd say compared to the (programming and usage of) robots and (training and hiring of) humans required to actually assemble the thing.

You don't design the car, you design the process to manufacture the car. The desired properties of the car itself just provides some constraints on the manufacturing process.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#64

Post by the-dude »

pavlov wrote: post #53

Another British gadget luminary, Sir Clive Sinclair (of early homecomputer ZX-81 fame) also tried his hand at electric vehicles in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5 The product line was supposed to grow to include a two-seater C10 and a three-seater C15, but the C5 flopped so badly that those more car-like models never got produced.

The Spectrum was quite a success as well :-)

Regarding the C5 : it only now makes me think of the introduction of the Segway. Lots of hype, didn't live up to the dream.

And : my physics teacher had a C5. However at the time it was not road legal in The Netherlands so he had to stop using it for his commute. This may have limited adoption.

Also, the C5 was not only ahead of its time regarding the electric aspect of it, it also introduced a sitting / lying position ahead of the popularity of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#65

Post by riffraff »

Svip wrote: post #44
the-dude wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bose. Bang & Olufsen.

Back when CRT televisions were the only option, Bang & Olufsen really made televisions of that era look great. But with flatscreens, everyone can make a television look great, so they've lost their edge. My point being, I don't think the comparison is fair. B&O used to be something. I don't think Dyson ever was.

Didn't they invent the bag-less vacuum cleaner?

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#66

Post by xivzgrev »

Why do companies keep thinking they can build a fucking car? Yes Tesla did it but it was a company 100% dedicated to it. Dyson has a core business already.

I’m also skeptical about Apple but at least they have one of the largest treasure chests in the world of cash so they can more afford a moon shot.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#67

Post by TwoHeadedBeast »

dangrossman wrote: post #46
FerretFred wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm surprised at this - seems bizarre that it's a 'great product' but isn't commercially viable in any way? The UK government are pushing EVs heavily but there's no charging infrastructure in place and very few can afford the £30-40K it costs to buy them :(

> there's no charging infrastructure in place There are over 15,000 EV charging points in the UK today, which is about 2X the number of petrol stations. Ionity will have 40 350 kW fast charging stations in the UK as well.

Not really comparable. A charging point is more like a parking spot, where you park the car and charge it, you might not come back to it for days.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#68

Post by _ea1k »

jordache wrote: post #11

Shocked! This is akin to if a bicycle company tried to build cars, thinking their engineers can simply shift from bicycles to cars...

I get that there are examples of companies that moved from bicycles to cars (or planes), but I doubt there are recent examples. It is much harder to enter the mature automotive market, which is what makes Tesla's accomplishments extraordinary.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#69

Post by 0xffff2 »

dangrossman wrote: post #46
FerretFred wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm surprised at this - seems bizarre that it's a 'great product' but isn't commercially viable in any way? The UK government are pushing EVs heavily but there's no charging infrastructure in place and very few can afford the £30-40K it costs to buy them :(

> there's no charging infrastructure in place There are over 15,000 EV charging points in the UK today, which is about 2X the number of petrol stations. Ionity will have 40 350 kW fast charging stations in the UK as well.

> There are over 15,000 EV charging points in the UK today

Is a "point" a single cable, or a location with potentially several cables?

>which is about 2X the number of petrol stations

Sounds like a useless comparison when a petrol pump can serve far more vehicles per hour than a charging cable.

Not to say that GP is right, but accurate comparisons are much more convincing.

Re: Dyson has scrapped its electric car project

#70

Post by numbers »

I have 4 Dyson products, besides the hair-dryer, all of the others are bad (can't say they suck b/c that's the main job of 2 of the vacuums and they can't get it done).

I bought the dyson air purifier that's cold and hot, it's so bad...works at the same level as a USB fan...

The vacuums are loud and look futuristic but can't clean anything properly.

Any recommendations for a good vacuum are welcome!

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