Dyson’s electric car to hit the streets by 2020

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As carmakers and tech giants are increasingly enthusiastic about electric cars, an unexpected player is stepping onto the battlefield.

Dyson, the British company that is famous for its vacuum cleaners and hair dryers, announced on Tuesday that it has begun work on a battery-powered vehicle due for launch by 2020.

In a letter to employees, company founder James Dyson said that he has long been concerned by exhaust emissions and that his company even developed a cyclonic filter for diesel vehicles due to his concerns in 1990.

Dyson founder James Dyson's email to employees. /Photo via James Dyson's Twitter

“The team is already over 400 strong, and we are recruiting aggressively,” Dyson said in the email, indicating that the company is committed to invest two billion pounds in this project.

Forbes noted that Dyson recently spent 90 million US dollars to buy Sakti3, a solid-state battery company from Michigan.

“Dyson claims that Sakti3’s solid state technology is potentially smaller, safer, more reliable and longer-lasting than the most advanced lithium-ion batteries on the market today,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas told Forbes.

James Dyson has not yet decided where the vehicle would be manufactured, although he has ruled out working with any existing auto companies, Reuters reported.

There’s no further detail revealed in the announcement, but Dyson told The Guardian that the electric vehicle won’t be a sports car, but will be “radically different” from current models.