[Closed] Soooo - Dyson?

Am I terrible for thinking he saw a chance to get some cash from the tories, pi$$ed it away and shut up shop when it dried up?

I never expected him to develop one just develop battery tech to sell.

In short Dyson has found the “simple” automotive industry is actually a lot harder to enter than they’d realised. Back to your ball wheelbarrow Dyson.

Anyone else think of this when they read Ball Wheelbarrow?

He cant make decent vacuum cleaners.
I'm not surprised this has failed.

Am I wrong to suspect that he has successfully alienated at least 48% of his potential UK electric car market before even starting?

I’ve had his vacuums, Still have one, pretty good imo, however, build and retail cars? No chance. I’m not a Tesla fanboy but I salute Elon giving it a try at mixing up the automotive market and disrupt a few of the old guard.

Devious dick, deluded dick, or just a dick. I currently can't decide.

Am I wrong to suspect that he has successfully alienated at least 48% of his potential UK electric car market before even starting?

Given the Brexit demographics, I’d say more like 95% (of the UK anyway)

Well Tesla is $1bn in the hole and is only propped up by the army of investors who keep on pumping in the cash and keeping the company afloat as if Tesla was some form of religious cult they're all obsessed with. It won't survive for long now the big established car manufacturers are getting in on the act. Teslas are good cars but they've had the market to themselves long enough now and the big established companies are coming and know how to make good cars too and, unlike Tesla, by the numbers and at a sensible cost - which is the real key to success. The EV market is going to get big very quickly and the competition will be brutal and most of Tesla's competitors are backed by governments and not fickle investors who could pull the plug on the cash lifeline at any time. But maybe the real genius of Tesla is that they were never in it for the cars, but the battery development and will ditch the cars and just sell the batteries to the other car companies.

Dyson has realised the challenges of getting the production costs down and realised it was not going to work commercially. It's a shame, but this story is not necessarily over. He will have developed a load of technology protected under valuable patents and IP that he'll sell licences to the other EV manufacturers, and the income from which will keep the millions flowing into the Dyson company for many years to come. Maybe not a daft business model after all. Let the others take the big risks with the big investments in huge car production plants and you just licence the technology and sit back and count the cash coming in.

You may not like him, but the guy certainly isn't a dick. He made a million from a wheelbarrow for crying out loud. They guy's a genius. The only dicks are those that judge people they don't know by the way they voted in a referendum and who dared to express their opinion in a supposedly free and democratic country. The adults left the room a long time ago in this debate.

wobbliscotte

They guy’s a genius. The only dicks are those that judge people they don’t know by the way they voted in a referendum and who dared to express their opinion in a supposedly free and democratic country.

That's not why I think he is a dick. Its due to the utter hypocrisy he has exhibited.
By all means state the case for Brexit but at least have the balls to stand by what you say.

So yeah, he's a dick. He broke rule 1 in a big way.

Amazon and google have long played in car AI tech but neither bothering with making cars despite their billions, Tesla struggling to turn profit despite achieving mass production, Dyson is a minnow by comparison. I think profit in car production is very hard to achieve and Dyson finally realised, even more so in this age of massive shift to electric uncertainty. Even the big boyz are going to struggle with the R&D investment v uncertainty of timing the EV shift v tight margins v dealer upheaval to the 'New Order' v all the other associated stuff.

I had hoped it would be an opportunity to reset the paradigm in the way Issigonis did with the mini (or something) but I suspect the plague of ridiculously large, powerful, heavy, "safe" cars filled with soft touch plastics is too ingrained and impossible to break out of.

Shame, I thought he'd be more brave than that.

Took the money and ran? Built a business on products that required the owners/users to buy newer models as their previous models failed in spectacular fashion... and thats another point, it's really just a fashion brand innit.... he (not him) but is designers had some great ideas that changed rechargeable vacuums and such and I hope they at least moved out of Dyson before it went pop..

He also changed the model pricing which meant that other manufacturers could up their prices to close to Dyson, then develop/copy the designs and we have a whole new pricing to market platform.

But £400 for a vacuum?

No fanks.

He alienated the Remainers because he chose to move his production facilities abroad, when he claimed that Brexit would be good for UK Business, and he then realised 90% of the population thought that double standards... and we stopped buying his products.

Ha bloody ha.

All I hope now is that the skills that his workforce have are able to find suitable employment, but since all Dysons co-horts have absolutely no idea what they are doing, why they are even doing it and the fact that the UK has pretty much had enough of this Brexit bollocks means the employees will face long dole queues...

I'm going to go with "deluded dick". And that having worked there too.

Ref Tesla You need to remeber the US Gov is also a massive investor, via the subs it's given elon, i understood without that, they would have gone under a long time ago.

Back to cars, wobbli hit the nail on the head. Existing auto makers simply wont make things that loose money the way Tesla does, so it's been slow becuase they know that "their" market will be huge in comparison to Tesla and as such the exposure to liability much higher as well.

Oh, and I don't think there were any UK production facilities to move abroad. There are plenty of remain-supporting reasons to be sickened by his contributions to the debate, but this is not one of them.

Having hoovered up £175m of government funding,

Frankly, that deserved more love than it got.

bikebouy

I hope they at least moved out of Dyson before it went pop..

All I hope now is that the skills that his workforce have are able to find suitable employment,

You do realise Dyson hasn't gone pop don't you? He's just backed out of his automotive project. The rest of his business is still going great for him.

Well, thats good news then. And No I didn't know that.

I still hope the skilled folks get other jobs when it does go pop.

I like my Dyson handheld vac, it's certainly over-priced though. I can't say I was ever that excited about them doing a car, it's difficult to see what they'd do that Tesla wasn't already doing. Tesla has two big things in it's favour, the motor (widely accepted as the best EV motor currently available) and their battery tech. I would have thought Dyson would have had to spend billions to come up with either a significantly better motor or a significantly better battery. Where Tesla falls down is the quality of the actual car, production QC and retail distribution and I couldn't see that Dyson would magically get that right straight away either.

Given Tesla are about to bring Gigafactory 3 online and churn out cars for the Chinese (and possibly wider Asian market) their future looks bright to me. I'm not a Tesla fanboi and I think it's borderline criminal the false expectations Elon has set recently over the level of self-driving capability that will be available within the next couple of years but they have succeeded already - the amount of cars they're selling now (compared with the similar mid-market luxury brands) is pretty amazing. I also used to think that once the mainstream manufacturers started taking EVs seriously they'd soon force Tesla out but I don't see that being the case anymore. That said Elon never really wanted Tesla to become a mainstream manufacturer so it's possible they'll start more partnerships soon and focus more on the battery side (manufacturing as much as R&D).

Rivian is another interesting one, a lot of people here have written them off but with the Amazon tie-up and some of their other partnerships/tie-ups and tech they've got they could well sew up the mid market SUV/pick-up sector.

Well Tesla is $1bn in the hole and is only propped up by the army of investors who keep on pumping in the cash and keeping the company afloat as if Tesla was some form of religious cult they’re all obsessed with. It won’t survive for long now the big established car manufacturers are getting in on the act. Teslas are good cars but they’ve had the market to themselves long enough now and the big established companies are coming and know how to make good cars too and, unlike Tesla, by the numbers and at a sensible cost – which is the real key to success. The EV market is going to get big very quickly and the competition will be brutal and most of Tesla’s competitors are backed by governments and not fickle investors who could pull the plug on the cash lifeline at any time. But maybe the real genius of Tesla is that they were never in it for the cars, but the battery development and will ditch the cars and just sell the batteries to the other car companies.

Investors are pumping the cash into Tesla because they can see their future potential. The "established" manufacturers are still way too invested in ICE tech to seriously flood the market with EVs over the next decade. It would be suicide as they currently depend on ICE sales for about 99% of their income. So for them EV is still more a PR/compliance exercise. Tesla don't have any of this legacy baggage and that's why they are so successful in the BEV market. They are still very much in the production ramp up stage with heavy capex on infrastructure, but unit profit margin is actually one of the highest in the industry. Driving a Model X for the last 2 years has been enough to convince me that ICE cars are now dead in the water and that Tesla has a bright future - they simply backed the right horse and fully committed to it. I reckon JLR is far more likely to go under than Tesla in the next decade.

I still hope the skilled folks get other jobs when it does go pop.

he has said that there are enough vacancies for most of them to be absorbed into other parts of the business, and 'For those that cannot, or do not wish to, find alternate roles, we will support them fairly and with the respect deserved'

Dyson employs people from many different places/races and actively supports getting more women into science and engineering, but he gets no credit for that amongst the brexit bigots on this forum.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11033725/Women-and-girls-are-vital-to-engineering-says-Sir-James-Dyson.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/04/james-dyson-addresses-engineering-skills-gap-with-university-launch

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-the-new-dyson-institute-the-answer-to-the-university-funding-crisis-55qcdblhs

I’ve no idea why people get annoyed at Dyson and his Brexit views.

Oh wait!

https://twitter.com/bydonkeys/status/1102449014463713280?s=21

Apple gave up. Wasn't surprised to learn Dyson have too.

Shame we'll never know what Uncle Steve was dreaming up.

I like to think it was a Sinclair C5 type of thing, that actually worked and everyone wanted.

Dyson is undoubtedly a cock-end. But after I tweeted their customer service about a problem with one of the vacuum attachments they posted a new one straight out to me. Of course I paid for it 100x in the price of the vacuum, but still ....

That’s the annoying thing despite what people claim they’re vacuums are pretty good. I’ve owned 2 in almost 20 years both are still working one is used as ash vacuum which kills vacuums but it still keeps going.

I had one of the original "pull along" yellow things.. at first it was brilliant, then it broke about 9mths later.. on taking it to the tip I was confronted with a mini skip full of them.

I'm sure his products have been improved over the years, thats a good thing, because the early stuff was crap and I for one fell for it.

It's really encouraging to hear his companies policies for ethnic and race diversity is robust and gender too, if theres anything we've learned over the recent years is Gender and Race have no baring on whether someone is good at their job or not..

Eh lyingblohard...

I had one of the original “pull along” yellow things.. at first it was brilliant, then it broke about 9mths later.. on taking it to the tip I was confronted with a mini skip full of them.

Probably from people who throw things away after a few months instead of maybe trying to fix them or return them under warranty.

As FuzzyWuzzy points out, Tesla’s long term strategy isn’t cars it’s batteries.

At the moment they’re trying to pump prime the market so it gets to the tipping point where customers start defaulting to EVs first and all the associated charging infrastructure needed to support that gets put in place.

By which point the major automotive companies will be making great EVs and Tesla can drop back into their long term plan to make shed loads of money from battery tech. They need to create the market for that first.

I guess he realised Dyson can't make anything that doesn't suck.

Dyson send you bits out if they break.

Yeah they do some repair deal iirc but I’ve never needed to use it.

he has said that there are enough vacancies for most of them to be absorbed into other parts of the business

From my relative who now jobless this sounds like PR. I'd doubt many automotive engineers really want a move into the home appliance arena anyway.

I'd bet he knew he'd never manage to make a viable vehicle.

Tesla are supposed to only exist as platform to develop Battery tech, I'd hope they sold some of their patents to VW because VW (via Porsche in the first instance) aren't ****ing about.

The Taycan might cost more than an S, and it might have a slightly shorter range, but they seem to have cracked a few things that Tesla couldn't - namely cooler running batteries which are more efficient and far faster charging times about 22mins v 40mins. Of course, the infrastructure isn't really there for either at the moment.

If the Porsche is built like a Porsche (I.E. a lot better than Tesla) which it will be then Tesla has some real competition, especially as, well it's a Porsche. Their will no doubt be a cheaper Audi, a cheaper still VW and cheaper again Seat and Skoda versions of the same tech in a few years.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dyson, already on the ropes trying to complete with Tesla, took one look at the Taycan and thought "nah, we've had it chaps".

The Taycan might cost more than an S, and it might have a slightly shorter range, but they seem to have cracked a few things that Tesla couldn’t – namely cooler running batteries which are more efficient and far faster charging times about 22mins v 40mins. Of course, the infrastructure isn’t really there for either at the moment.

When you compare them a bit more objectively, there are actually a lot of plus points for the Tesla:-

https://insideevs.com/reviews/369359/porsche-taycan-vs-tesla-model-s/

Anyway I'm both a Tesla and Porsche fanboy, so I'm happy there are more EV choices. But the Taycan price has gone well beyond the original hype. It's a non-starter for me until there are sub-£100k variants and those are likely to be lacking Tesla performance.

Some analysis apparently from car industry people here
https://www.autocar.co.uk/opinion/industry/opinion-why-dyson-failed

Further to some of above comments on Dyson, being a commercial and design 'genius' and being a disapointment as a human being are not mutually exclusive

being a commercial and design ‘genius’ and being a disapointment as a human being are not mutually exclusive

as you are implying that he is a dissappointment as a human being what are you basing that on - that he is a brexit supporter ?

or is it just a case of 'it takes one to know one' ?

I had one of the original “pull along” yellow things.. at first it was brilliant, then it broke about 9mths later.. on taking it to the tip I was confronted with a mini skip full of them.

Many years ago an elderly customer asked me to take 3 dysons to the local tip, all broke, took one apart,and it looked nicely made,the other had melted at the switch, the final one the drive wheel pulley had melted, dyson just said we dont carry spares for the final one, its to old.

So off to the tip,hi viz man grabbed hold of them before they went into the electricals skip, he said we have a container just for dysons as the plastic used is high quality and bright coloured, we get good money for them and the motor, and that they got lots of them.

Turner Guy..... Charming, and perhaps says more about you than me.
if you actually think about my comment, I did not actually say I thought he was a disappointing human being, just simply that is possible to be one to many people, as shown on this thread, and yet successful in life. It isn't binary

In reality being a "design genius" and producing a profitable passenger car have almost nothing in common. Myriad are the companies that got caught up in the romance of building a car only to have the stark reality of the shear size of the task bring them crashing back to the ground.

Lets face it, too many people concentrate on the fun bits, like the engine (or motors) and the performance, or the styling, but a modern passenger car is mostly dull. Its made up of tens of thousands of parts that are extremely complex and all necessary, and yet are the ones that very few people even think about. From door seals to windscreen demisting, bonnet catches to rear number plate lights and seat belt anchorages to coolant header tanks, a modern car is very, very, very tedious to develop. The existing OEs now have 50 or more years, and sometimes as many as 7 or 8 generations of any given model history to fall back on. They have proven supply chains, sign off criteria, parts networks and marketing departments all full of tens of thousands of very experienced, very industrious people.

The thought that somehow you could come into the market place fresh with a viable passenger car simply because you know a little bit about motors is about the same as me trying to build a space shuttle because i once took my toaster apart and fixed it.

I actually consulted to Dyson on the powertrain for this new car, and whilst the team of (very smart) engineers was doing a decent job in that department, it was pretty clear that overall the horse was somewhat riderless and lacking focus and direction. Without a confirmed business plan, it was, imo, always an extremely high risk exercise!

So dyson make highly engineered brightly coloured plastic household stuff,at very expensive prices,sold in high street stores and the internet,then decided to make a new car,something mainstream car makers do for a job every day,but nowadays car makers are sharing the same basic platform and putting a body on top,car makers also have the parts supply in local dealers,and local dealers who just sell that make of vehicle and trained staff to repair them.

Dyson have none of the above as yet, and would need to buy into a dealer network and supply chain,a very expensive proposition, so they tried to sell the concept of the car and nobody wanted it.

But theyve most probably developed enough of the car idea to sell bits onto other manufacturers.

“ UK taxpayers gave around £5 million to Dyson to support the electric car project that it scrapped this week, the company says.

James Dyson told staff yesterday that, while the firm had developed a “fantastic” car, it wasn’t commercially viable and he would be ending the project, which was launched in 2016. The electric car unit employs 500 people, who the company hopes to redeploy.

However, the project involved the UK government giving millions of pounds in funding. The firm told New Scientist that it had drawn down £5 million of a £16 million grant to support the project.

Dyson says the money was spent as intended, on research and development. A spokesperson says: “The funding we have received from the UK government is to support Dyson’s research and development of battery technologies. Our development of battery technology will not change in light of this announcement.”

However, government documents have previously shown the money was primarily destined to help development of an electric car.

“The government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric vehicle at their headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. This will secure £174m of investment in the area, creating over 500 jobs, mostly in engineering,” said the National Infrastructure Delivery Plan published in 2016.”

The only way you can possibly get into mainstream automotive manufacturing is if you have a genuine USP like Tesla did. That and seriously deep pockets. Dyson would have faced direct competition from both Tesla and the established players trying to catch up. He was 10 years too late to get it off the ground and didn't have an obvious USP. Tesla struggled in the early days without any competition to speak of and is still only just keeping its head above water both financially and in production capacity. The chances of another start-up making it today are pretty remote - especially in the UK!