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The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

dyson.co.uk

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Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#131

Post by Smoosh »

clouddrover wrote: post #35
barbegal wrote: post #23

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 th…

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-us... 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 desig…

Or perhaps the opposite. They could have designed a motor and battery package which other manufacturers could build into their own designs.

Thus they would get a start into electric vehicles without needing to invest in the entire production process. From there move to a Dyson branded car manufactured by one of their partners (designed by Dyson in collaboration with their partner) and then, if worthwhile, step up to manufacturing the entire car themselves.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#133

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25
signamos wrote: post #18

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.

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.

My father's Dyson vacuum is like 15+ years old. He hid it in the trunk of his car during the divorce. Still enjoys using it. I have a battery powered stick vacuum that's 4+ years old by now and still runs great.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#134

Post by Smaug123 »

arethuza wrote: post #53
objclxt wrote: post #8

> 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 developm…

"The Model 3 was one of the most popular new cars sold in the UK last year" I think that's overstating things a bit, it's not even in the top ten? https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/10-best-selling-... NB They did do very well in April this year, but that's perhaps a bit of an unusual situation!

One could interpret that as "one of the most popular newly-available cars"? If I understand correctly, Model 3 only became available to buy in the UK mid-2019. It's an odd reading, but not impossible.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#135

Post by Smaug123 »

maharajatever wrote: post #126

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 us…

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.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#136

Post by Sir_Substance »

acallaghan wrote: post #70
ForHackernews wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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 am…

That's the opposite of a smart appliance to be honest.

You can use minimodem[1] to scream a file across the room from one computers speakers to another computers modem.

It's a cute trick but requires very little in the way of computation, and is a far cry from the bluetooth infested dumpster fire that is found in the modern app-controlled smart appliance offering.

It's also not significantly an improvement from giving your products clearly labeled short model names and having a two digit code on a 10c LED screen, preferably with a corrosponding entry in the manual. I'd happily give it up in exchange for a washing machine with minimal electronics, so that it will last 20 years and can be fixed with duct tape and epoxy.

[1]http://www.whence.com/minimodem/

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#137

Post by sib »

rsync wrote: post #86

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…

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.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#138

Post by potatochup »

rsync wrote: post #86

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…

There are plenty of Japanese cars that have been doing this for decades to reduce the complexity of RHD vs LHD.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#139

Post by gamblor956 »

jungturk wrote: post #108
gamblor956 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TSLA had positive EBIDTA in 2016, 2018 and 2019 (and Q1 2020). https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials

Tesla had positive non GAAP EBITDA, which means nothing.

Re: The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle

#140

Post by mNovak »

primrose wrote: post #125
troyvit wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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