Friday, March 29, 2024

James Dyson showed the prototype of his abandoned electric car

British inventor and billionaire Sir James Dyson had the ambition to market its own electric car. He invested several years and a lot of money in an electric car. But, in October last year, he surprisingly announced his electric car is not going to be built. However, the electric car itself still remained a mystery, because only a small number of company employees saw it live. And now, six months later, Dyson decided to demonstrate the canceled prototype.

The electric vehicle, codenamed “N526,” was a seven-seater SUV with a whopping 600-mile (approx. 966 km) range per charge (based on Europe’s WLTP standards). That would have been the largest range of an electric car to date.

Despite its 2.6-ton weight, the N526 could accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 4.8 seconds, Dyson said in an interview with The Times. The Dyson car has a top speed of 125 mph (200 km/h). This is all thanks to the twin 200 kW electric motors rated with 536 hp and 650 Nm of torque.

Dyson electric car's futuristic interior.
Dyson electric car’s futuristic interior.

According to Dyson, other special features include wheels that are larger than any other production vehicle and that the windscreen is flatter than that of a Ferrari. This 5-meters long, 2-meters wide and 1.7-meters tall SUV had slim seats, featuring segmented cushions and lollipop-shaped headrests. Of course, there was to be a head-up display, which was to work on the principle of a hologram.

James Dyson spent about £500 million (approx. $605 million) of personal funds to develop a potential competitor to Tesla. The project was eventually canceled due to financial demands. According to Dyson, the sale of each electric car would have had to fetch at least £150,000 just for the company to break even. This made the project difficult to maintain for a company that primarily makes vacuum cleaners and has no revenue from non-electric car models to offset the costs.