This time, the British richest man could not hold it.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Sprout NewSeed” ( ID: pelink), author Liu Bo.
For Dyson, whose work begins with drafts, there is no need to be patient after seeing the viability of commercialization.
Dyson, which sells for 3,000 yuan a hair dryer, has attracted countless gaze since it announced that it would build a car across the border two years ago, but today this ambitious car-making plan has not escaped the fate of failure.
News NewSeed (ID:pelink) was informed that Dyson founder James Dyson recently announced in an email to all employees that the company has canceled the electric vehicle manufacturing project. He said in the email: “The Dyson team developed an excellent car; they are methodically original and loyal to our philosophy. But even though we have worked hard throughout the development process, we are I don’t see any way to make it commercially viable.”
In addition, James Dyson also revealed in the mail that the company had tried to sell electric car projects, but no buyers took over, so they had to stop the project. Next, Dyson will close the R&D institutions in the UK and Singapore, investing R&D resources in solid-state batteries, sensing technology, vision systems, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The original electric vehicle project team can enter Dyson’s other Among the projects.
For the failure of the electric car project, James Dyson said: “This will not be Dyson’s first project to change direction, nor will it be the last one.” But this also proves that cross-border vehicles have never been built. It’s not an easy task, and the incoming person needs to think twice before going.
The dream of building a car began in the 1990s
In the 1980s, the vacuum cleaner “G-Force” allowed Dyson to earn the first pot of gold, which has been developed to date, and its product line covers a variety of small appliances such as hair dryers, vacuum cleaners and curling irons. In 2012, Dyson entered the Chinese market. With expensive products and strong Chinese consumers, Dyson earned nearly 10 billion yuan a year, and James Dyson once reached the top of the UK.
butDyson is not confined to the field of home appliances. In fact, Dyson’s desire to build a car has already begun in the 1990s.
As early as March 1990, James Dyson and his technical team began researching cyclonic filtration technology, which can be applied to capture fine particles in automotive exhaust systems. Then in 1993, the Dyson team developed a diesel disposal system, but the car companies at the time did not care about pollution, so no one would pay for the technology.
But James Dyson did not give up the solution to solve the global air pollution problem, so he began to develop new battery technology, and believe that electric vehicles can solve the pollution problem from the source.
In 2013, Dyson began recruiting cars for R&D and production, and recruited a number of design and R&D talents from Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce to form a R&D team of more than 400 people.
In 2014, Dyson invested $15 million in the lithium battery company Sakti3 in Michigan, USA, which is Dyson’s first external investment. A year later, Dyson acquired Sakti3 for $90 million.
In an interview with Wired, Dyson said: “Investing in new basic technologies means that we are transforming into a true technology company.” After that, Dyson announced that it will invest $1.4 billion to build a battery plant and develop solid-state lithium battery technology. . In 2017, Dyson started building a global supply chain control center and received special funding from the UK government for battery development.
In this regard, Dyson is ready to build a car.
In the early morning of September 27, 2017, James Dyson announced to all employees by mail that Dyson will officially begin research and development of electric vehicles, and will invest 2 billion pounds in this project in the future.
In August last year, Dyson announced that it would invest £116 million in an abandoned airfield in Harlowton, England, to establish a technology research and development center for automotive testing. Its CEO, Jim Lovan, said in a statement: “The number of our car team is growing, it is time to start the next phase of the car project.”
After October last year, Dyson announced plans to produce electric vehicles and chose Singapore as a place to build factories. It is understood that the Singapore factory will be completed in 2020, and the first batch of cars is scheduled to start production in 2021. At the time, Dyson claimed that one of the reasons for choosing Singapore was that it was “close to the high-growth market for car sales”.
In January of this year, Dyson dug up Roland Kruger, the global president of Infiniti, who has just left the company. The latter will fully lead Dyson’s car business, knowing the sales of Infiniti under Kruger’s leadership. Increased by 15%. What is just unexpected is that after a lapse of nine months, Kruger will reconsider the significance of staying in Dyson’s work.
2 billion pounds justGlass of water and salary
Although the motor is Dyson’s winning formula, it can help it easily enter any category of product areas. But after all, from home appliances to the car, Dyson is also facing a challenge as a “new person.”
First, burning money is the biggest problem. At present, in order to build a car, Dyson has invested a total of 2 billion pounds (equivalent to RMB 17.8 billion), of which 1 billion pounds is used to develop electric vehicles, and another 1 billion pounds is used to develop two battery technologies.
What is the concept of £2 billion? Taking 2018 revenue data as an example, Dyson’s annual turnover increased by 28% to 4.4 billion pounds, and profit increased by 33% to 1.1 billion pounds. It can be said that Dyson will invest the equivalent of two years of profit for the car, which is a bloody one.
But this £2 billion is not enough for electric cars. Li Bin, the founder of Wei Lai, once said that 20 billion yuan is just the “entry capital” for making cars. Even Tesla, the pioneer in the field of electric vehicles, is still losing money.
Compared with Evergrande, which is also a cross-border car, its new energy vehicle industry chain has taken shape for more than a year, covering the areas of automobile R&D, manufacturing, charging infrastructure, product circulation, etc., with a total investment of 3000. 100 million yuan. Even so, in August this year, Evergrande Health issued a profit warning. It is estimated that the net loss in the first half of this year will be about RMB 2 billion. The main reason is that “expanding new energy vehicle business is in the early stage of investment, research and development and other related expenses and interest expenses. increase”.
In contrast, Dyson’s funds are simply a drop in the bucket, except for the research and development of electric vehicles, but also to maintain the normal operation of home appliances, the financial pressure is huge.
Second, although the threshold of electric vehicles is low, mass production is not easy. Taking Tesla as an example, despite its leading position in electronic control technology, the low-end model Model 3, which has high hopes for it, has been delayed due to the welding of the body. It was not until the end of June 2018 that Tesla completed the goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week by Musk.
For Dyson, its experience and technology in the automotive platform, vehicle manufacturing experience, smart interconnection technology, parts supply chain and sales channels are missing, and these aspects are for the manufacture of electric vehicles. It is indispensable, even in January 2017, Dyson dug Tesla’s chief spokesman Ricardo Reyes as the Minister of Communications.
And those new Chinese carmakers who preceded Dyson’s entry, it’s a big problem to achieve the scheduled delivery goal so far. According to the car delivery data released by Weilai Automobile in July this year, it delivered a total of 837 new cars in July, down about 37.5% from the previous month. Li Bin said in the announcement that the main reason for the sluggish delivery in July was that the company voluntarily recalled 4,803 ES8s, which led to tight battery supply and affected production and delivery in July.
In fact, it is not just Weilai Automobile. The sales targets set by the other new power companies are also far from the delivery status. Like the goal of Weimar Motors, it will deliver 100,000 units in 2019, but its sales volume in the first half of this year will be less than 10,000. Zero-sport cars will have a sales target of 10,000 units in the year and plan to achieve 200,000 units in 2020. However, it currently only delivers 10 S01 models.
Conclusion
Building a car as a heavy asset industry is destined to be a burning track, and it needs to have sufficient “ammunition” to maintain it. From mass production to delivery to profitability, this is a long-term process with many uncertainties. As Xu Jiayin said, it is necessary to be able to withstand loneliness in the road of making cars.
But obviously, for Dyson, who started from the draft, there is no need to be patient after seeing the feasibility of commercialization. If we continue to invest money and time for electric vehicles without any scruples, it is likely to affect the main business of home appliances, causing ourselves to fall into the trap.
So, getting out of time is probably the best choice for Dyson.