Dyson is making an electric car, Government funding documents reveal

The company has long been rumoured to be thinking about an electric vehicle, and might have the battery expertise to make it happen

Sir James Dyson has become Britain’s best-known entrepreneurial engineer (

Dyson appears to be working on an electric car.

The company has received funding from the UK Government to work on “a new battery electric vehicle”, according to an official document. The reference — found in the documents about the Government’s National Infrastructure Delivery Plan — now appears to have been removed.

Before it was deleted, the document said that the “government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric vehicle at their headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire”, according to the Guardian. “This will secure £174m of investment in the area, creating over 500 jobs, mostly in engineering."

The reference has now been removed. The only information referring to Dyson is a £16 million investment in its battery technologies.

But it is far from the first time that Dyson has been rumoured to be working on an electric vehicle. In September, CEO Max Conze said that the company was “ruling nothing out” when he was asked about building a car.

Though the technology might seem a strange fit for a company more famous for its vacuum cleaners, Dyson has been involved with work on batteries of the future and made a huge investment into a pioneering battery firm last year. Power and batteries is one of the biggest challenges to widely-available electric vehicles, and so Dyson’s expertise in the industry might help it take on the likes of Google, which is already building a self-driving, battery-powered vehicle, and the long-rumoured Apple Car.