Dyson Gives Glimpse at Abandoned Vehicle Prototype

The company pulled the plug on the project last year.

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The founder of Dyson claims that the British maker of vacuums and hair care products built an electric SUV with a range of 600 miles before pulling the plug on the project last year.

James Dyson, the company’s billionaire chief engineer, provided a look at the prototype vehicle as part of an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine, CNET reports.

The vehicle would have weighed nearly three tons, but with dramatically improved range due to a solid-state battery and two electric motors. The company said it would be capable of going zero to 62 miles per hour in 4.8 seconds, with 536 total horsepower and a top speed of 125 mph.

Dyson said he poured more than $600 million into the secretive project — including the acquisition of a Michigan battery technology company, the hiring of hundreds of engineers and the planned construction of testing facilities in the U.K. and a factory in Singapore — before announcing the company would abandon the project last October.

Dyson wrote at the time that the project would not be commercially viable and that efforts to find a buyer for it were unsuccessful. He told the Times that the vehicle would need to sell for $150,000 just to break even on each one.

The company’s battery technology efforts, however, would continue, and the company is also working on vehicle sensors, CNET noted.

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