Sir James Dyson plans to develop an electric motor at his Wiltshire research labs. Interviewed by The Independent, he said that such vehicles were the future of transport and could outnumber petrol vehicles in a decade. His plans remain vague, but will involve batteries charged with solar power as well as the grid.
Gasoline in Dyson’s native England now costs about $8.80 a gallon. Change runs fast there: an ugly but cheap electric smart car called the G-Wiz “costs only 1p a mile to run” and qualifies for broad tax and turnpike exemptions.
With Dyson on the game, however, the U.K. could have a pretty one, with a single giant spherical orange tire, by 2011.
Oh, the appliances that suck guy. Now if Freeman Dyson were thinking about an electric car, then I’d be interested. At least as long as it wasn’t powered by a series of tiny atomic bombs anyway.
Dyson… whether or not you like his vacuums, the man has drive and experience, and I think he can pull something like this off. Not to mention, with a last name like Dyson, don’t you just expect greatness?
I don’t know where to start. Either the reporter has misunderstood Dyson, or Dyson’s utterly crocked. Or cracked.
‘”An electric car doesn’t go far enough. It could do. Electric motors can do that,” he said.’
What is that supposed to mean? It could do what? Motors can do what? (Also, see comment below about the importance of motor vs. battery in an electric car.)
“An electric motor can go to very high speeds.”
Sure, what’s the point? High RPM by itself doesn’t provide the power to move a vehicle at highway speeds.
Power is a product of torque and speed. Torque is related to current. Current is measured in amperes. Battery capacity is measured in ampere-hours. There’s the rub.
Making a successful electric car has little to do with the motor; there are plenty of efficient and compact motors already. In an EV, it’s all about battery capacity. I don’t see him addressing that issue.
FWIW, lithium batteries are the current darlings of the researchers; but the most successful, stable, long-lived, safest, and environmentally benign batteries for EVs are Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH). Oddly, one company, Cobasys, controls the patents on NiMH batteries — and they refuse to license any company to manufacture batteries in a size large enough to be used in electric cars. Of course that *can’t possibly* be related to the fact that Chevron owns Cobasys.
“so a photo voltaic [solar] charge over a long period of time is an absolutely suitable way of charging a car.”
Except for the fact that a car of any size and mass acceptable to the average driver hasn’t a sufficiently large surface with decent solar exposure. Existing PVs can’t collect enough energy for more than a few miles per day.
True, highly optimized solar racers can manage highway speeds under ideal conditions with full sunlight. But they use the most advanced and expensive high-efficiency PVs. They’re also tiny, featherweight, fragile contraptions, missing every creature comfort the consumers expect. Some don’t even have windows; the driver lies down and sweats. It’s a race, after all, not a Sunday drive.
“Dyson Digital Motor (DDM) turns 10,000 times a minute – five times faster than that of a Formula One car.”
A Formula One racecar’s engine never exceeds 2000 RPM? Since when?
All that said, electric vehicles ARE practical, and you’ll see them in showrooms when gasoline is sufficiently expensive, and battery capacity and longevity have been dealt with.
Most likely the successful EVs will NOT come from Detroit and possibly not from Tokyo. They are going to be too disruptive a development for the hidebound conventional automakers to really embrace. Just as Toyota and Nissan caught GM, Ford, and Chrysler flat-footed on subcompacts in 1973, Geely and Chery will stomp Toyota and Nissan on EVs in 2013.
Just FYI, we have very, very few toll roads here. The only two I know of are the M6 toll road, and the Dartmouth bridge and tunnel.
Congestion charge!
I want a comfortable long-range electric car, but if Dyson makes them, I hope they won’t be as overpriced as his vacuums.
Dyson working on new generation of fast, green cars [Indy]
What’s that? Will he be ready for next year’s Indy 500?
Anonymous, look up “TL;DR” sometime…
The “10,000 rpm” figure is a misprint, typo, or mistake.
It’s supposed to be 100,000 rpm.
Which agrees with the motor spinning 5x faster than a 20,000 rpm F-1 engine.
Hopefully Sir James can sneak his digital motor into a car’s wheel. I can’t imagine the step-down transmission though.
He’s claiming his ddm is half the weight of a typical electric motor of the same power?!?!?!?!
If so, that reduction in weight would represent 1/2 of the “unsprung weight” ride and handling degradation penalty of wheel-motors being got rid of..