Dyson, the technology company best known for its vacuum cleaners, has scrapped a project to build electric cars. The firm, headed by British inventor Sir James Dyson, said its engineers had developed a "fantastic electric car" but that it would not hit the roads because it was not "commercially viable". Dyson had planned to invest more than £2bn in developing a "radical and different" electric vehicle, a project it launched in 2016. It said the car would not be aimed at the mass market. Dyson wanted to make something revolutionary - but also needed to make it pay. And the sums simply didn't add up. Sales of electric cars are climbing rapidly. Yet they still cost more to make than conventional cars, and generate much lower profits - if any. Dyson has concluded it simply can't afford to play with the big boys - although its efforts to make a quantum leap in battery technology will continue. The first cars had already been developed and were being tested. But in an email on Thursday, Sir James revealed that Dyson was closing electric car facilities both in the UK and Singapore. The project employed 523 people, 500 of whom were in UK, and Sir James praised their "immense" achievements. "This is not a product failure, or a failure of the team, for whom this news will be hard to hear and digest," Sir James wrote.
