If you go to Huaihai Road and stop a random girl and ask her which brand of hair dryer she likes, the answer you will get is probably Dyson;

Your girlfriend said that her best friend’s hair dryer is shoulder-length. Curly hair looks great, so you added the Dyson curling iron to your shopping cart knowingly;

While crying about poverty, your colleague gritted his teeth and bought the latest Dyson vacuum cleaner in 12 installments, and then every day I’m telling you, “This product smells so good.”

There seems to be a magic power in Dyson that makes everyone want to stop.

In just a few years, Dyson has become a popular Internet celebrity brand around the world. In China, Dyson, which has been dubbed "Hermès in the home appliance industry" and other labels, frequently hits the circle of friends. Every time it releases a new product, it can cause carnival in the consumer market. For the same item, even if Dyson is 10 times more expensive than other brands, it cannot stop the enthusiasm of countless fashionable men and beautiful women to say "Oh, buy it."

Dyson's smooth sailing is not without its troubles. At least when it comes to building cars, Dyson has tasted all the flavors of life. Especially for James Dyson, the 73-year-old founder of Dyson, perhaps it is still difficult to let go at this moment because his dream of building a car has been shattered.

This white-haired master of industrial design is also a technology enthusiast and has profound attainments in technological inventions. Therefore, when he announced that Dyson planned to cross-border car manufacturing, it instantly aroused the curiosity of many car enthusiasts.

I am serious about building cars!

Some people may say that Dyson’s decision to build a car was just a whim, just like Apple and Google, who have not yet been impulsive for love in their youth. But is this the case?

In fact, Dyson’s dream of building a car can be traced back to the 1990s. James Dyson happened to read a paper that mentioned experiments in which diesel exhaust accelerated the death of mice. In order to solve the problem of automobile pollution, he began to develop cyclone filters to capture diesel exhaust particles in 1990, and led the Dyson team to develop a diesel vehicle exhaust gas treatment system.

However, at that time, the public did not pay enough attention to environmental issues, and no car companies were willing to pay for Dyson's technology, so the entire project came to nothing.

After nearly 30 years of technology accumulation, Dyson has made progress in the home appliance market, and finally gained a firm foothold in the market with its expertise in digital motors, battery systems, and fluid dynamics.

Of course, as a company that focuses on technological innovation, Dyson’s focus is not only on the product itself, but also on the technical details of various deep areas. Core technologies such as digital motors and battery systems are the basis for manufacturing electric vehicles and are also important weights for Dyson in its pursuit of entering the automotive field.

Since 2013, Dyson has secretly restarted its car-making project and poached many design and R&D personnel from companies such as Tesla, Land Rover, Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. , while actively recruiting outstanding talents and forming a professional automotive team of more than 400 people.

As for all aspects of car manufacturing, Dyson has strengthened its internal confidentiality, and little information has been obtained from the outside world.

Until September 2017, James Dyson told all employees about his original intention of building a car in an email. At this point, Dyson has made its car-building plan public, and its layout around the field of electric vehicle manufacturing has officially begun.

Dyson also announced an investment plan totaling up to 2 billion pounds, of which 1 billion pounds will be spent on battery technology and 1 billion pounds on the car itself. In addition, James Dyson also spent 500 million pounds of his own money on car manufacturing.

In August 2018, Dyson registered a new trademark "Digital Motor" in the UK and invested 200 million pounds in the Haravington Military Airport Park in the UK for new office buildings and electric vehicles. Testing facility, which is also believed to be in preparation for the launch of new vehicles.

Two months later, Dyson announced that its first car manufacturing plant would be located in Singapore. According to the original plan, this fully customized two-story manufacturing plant will be completed in 2020 and produce an electric SUV. This new car will be launched in 2021.

Considering that most of its customers and production operations are in Asia, and the region's electric vehicle market has huge potential, Dyson also decided to move the company's headquarters from the United Kingdom to Singapore.

In April 2019, former Infiniti global president Roland Krueger joined Dyson and was fully responsible for its car-making projects until the product was launched.

Regrets, but no regrets

After outlining the seemingly wonderful dream of building a car, Dyson continued to inject blood into the automotive business. However, as the car-building project progresses, various problems have begun to emerge. The biggest question is what kind of benefits can be obtained at a huge cost, that is, the return on investment.

The turning point came in October 2019, when Dyson issued a statement saying it would abandon its electric vehicle project. As for the reasons, the official rhetoric is "not commercially feasible", "cannot find a buyer", "the market does not recognize" and so on.

From the perspective of the car-building route, Dyson chose to develop an electric vehicle product from scratch, which is also based on its profound technological accumulation. In addition to its mature experience in battery and motor technology, Dyson has already established a complete system in the manufacturing field. However, insisting on independent research and development and production also has its disadvantages, that is, it cannot obtain sufficient supply chain resources, which increases its own economic burden.

There is a saying among the new domestic car-making forces when it comes to the threshold for car-making that they cannot make it without 20 billion yuan of capital. Comparing Dyson's massive investment of 2.5 billion pounds (equivalent to RMB 23 billion) and looking at Dyson's financial situation, the situation is obviously much better. Based on Dyson's current operating situation in the field of home appliances, it is entirely feasible to support the development of the automotive business in the next few years.

But the key problem is that the cost of the electric car built by Dyson has reached 150,000 pounds. Such a high price is destined to not be favored by the market. Without sales and profits, everything It's all empty talk.

James Dyson believes that even if the mass production of electric vehicles is achieved, it will not bring considerable profits to the company. Investing a lot of money and energy in electric vehicles will actually affect the normal operation of other businesses such as home appliances. The implication is that you can't make much money by selling cars, and it's not a good idea to use the money earned from selling appliances to subsidize car projects.

In May 2019, the patent drawings of the Dyson electric car were exposed, and the mystery of this new car was unveiled. Dyson originally hoped to create a brand new model that could compete with Tesla Model

This year, James Dyson showed the prototype car internally codenamed N526 to the outside world during an interview. The new car is 5 meters long, 2 meters wide and 1.7 meters high. It is a large 7-seat pure electric SUV. In terms of appearance, in addition to the suspended roof, the new car also has novel designs such as streaming rearview mirrors and hidden door handles.

It is worth mentioning that the dashboard of the new car uses holographic projection technology, which can display information directly within the driver's line of sight. With the HUD head-up display, the driver does not have to lower his head to check vehicle speed, navigation and other information while driving.

The new car is equipped with two motors with a combined power of 543 horsepower and a peak torque of 650 N·m. It takes 4.8 seconds to accelerate from 0-100 km/h, and the top speed can reach 200 km/h. In terms of endurance performance, the new car has a cruising range of 965 kilometers on a single charge.

Obviously, Dyson designers and engineers have put a lot of effort and effort into this new car. From today's perspective, many concepts and technologies used in new cars are advanced. At the same time, it can also be found through many details that Dyson has passed on the exquisiteness of making home appliances to making cars.

Change your mind and start over

Building a car is not a simple matter. Faced with an uncertain prospect, it is not an option to continue to work hard, otherwise it will break your muscles and bones. If you decisively stop losses and find another way out, you can take care of long-term development.

In other words, building a car for Dyson is tantamount to a gamble: if it succeeds, it may be able to redefine the Dyson brand; if it fails, it may even accelerate the demise of the Dyson brand.

So, it is not a bad thing that Dyson decided to give up building cars after weighing the pros and cons.

Although the car-making project has been cut off, technology research and development has never stopped. Dyson has decided to invest its R&D resources in familiar areas such as sensing technology, vision systems, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and will continue to focus on manufacturing core technology projects for solid-state batteries.

In fact, Dyson has always had great expectations for the battery field. In 2015, Dyson acquired solid-state battery company Sakit3 for US$90 million, determined to independently develop solid-state lithium battery technology. In 2016, Dyson announced an investment of US$1.4 billion to build a solid-state lithium battery factory.

Judging from the current development of the electric vehicle market, the energy density of batteries is the biggest bottleneck. Based on the advantages of high energy density and high safety, solid-state batteries are considered to be the best choice for the next generation of electric vehicles. .

Based on its optimism about solid-state batteries, the BMW Group has announced that it will jointly develop next-generation solid-state battery technology with the US battery technology company Solid Power, hoping to increase the energy density of the battery by two to three times; at the same time, there are It is reported that Toyota plans to sell all-solid-state battery vehicles in the future; in 2018, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance invested US$65 million in the battery company Ionic Materials to develop new battery technologies, hoping to use solid-state batteries in electric vehicles in 2025 Battery.

For Dyson, if it can break through the R&D bottleneck of solid-state batteries and find a suitable commercialization path, it may be able to maximize profits and it is also a strategic direction.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.