Dyson has inched closer to creating its very first electric vehicle, as it recently filed to trademark the use of the ‘Digital Motor’ name in Europe for both appliance and automotive use.
The company best known for making vacuum cleaners has used this term previously on its household products. The filing, however, now also describes a brushless permanent-magnet synchronous motor which Dyson will use in its future vehicles.
Dyson surprised everyone last September when it confirmed work on an electric car, a project that has been in development since 2015. The car will be bespoke, use a custom chassis, advanced battery technology and electric motors developed in-house. More than $2.6 billion has been invested in it so far.
As of September 2017, approximately 400 Dyson employees were involved in the car project, and the company is looking to add 300 extra staff.
Dyson’s first electric vehicle will be a premium model targeting tech-driven customers and shall be limited to less than 10,000 units. This vehicle is tipped to receive solid-state batteries and, if it arrives in 2019 as planned, it may be the first electric vehicle on the market to feature such advanced batteries.
Company founder Sir James Dyson confirmed earlier this year that they won’t outsource production of the vehicles.
“Wherever we make the battery, we’ll make the car; that’s logical. So we want to be near our suppliers; we want to be in a place that welcomes us and is friendly to us, and where it is logistically most sensible. And we see a very large market for this car in the Far East.”
If everything goes well with their first model, Dyson says it will produce two more affordable EVs.
