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I don't understand the Dyson hype. Their products seem over-engineered, over-priced, and under-performing...

On top of which Dyson himself is strongly pro-Brexit [1] which is shaping up to be a disaster for the UK. Really don't hold out much hope for this.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/sir-james-dyson...

Yep. He also moved all his production out of the UK to Malaysia.
Yep - I'm trying to discourage everyone I can from buying Dyson products because of it.
In 3 words : No. Vaccum. Bag.
That is not unique to the Dyson brand.
Don't know how it looks in dyson vacuums, but in every brand I've tried, bagless vacuums are a disaster. They either don't filter that good, require special cleaning or both. One bagless vacuum I've recently used was designed so awfully, I joked that it should come with another vacuum to clean it. From what I've seen in pictures, Dyson's designs are much more easy to clean.
Pretty much all the Dyson's I've used have had very poor suction and hardly pick up anything.

The Toshiba bagless cleaners work well in my experience.

It's funny I had a few friends locally raving about how good dyson vacuum-cleaners were. I thought my existing vacuum was just fine, but I borrowed an upright from a friend for a few weeks and when I did I was hooked.

I started out by vacuuming the floors with my existing machine, and used tried the dyson afterwards. The amount of stuff it sucked up was very surprising.

Sure the dysons are a lot more expensive than the generic machines, but I have to say that I loved mine. It's only because I live abroad now, and I don't have carpets that I've not looked into getting another.

It was.

Other brands started to sell bagless vacuums only after Dyson first success. For other brands, bags was as profitable market.

Bagless vacuums aren't better. Really

Cleaning dust out of a bagless vacuum is bad if you have allergies.

Buying the bags is an annoyance but it is the lesser one.

Just get a subscription to them on amazon and you never have to think about it outside the 4 minutes it takes you to change the bag
I seen Henry and Hetty being used on a cruise ship and fell in love with a little happy blue guy. Too bad you cant get any of the line in USA. I dont think they have representation in North America.
I have been using a bagless vacuum for some years (no Dyson), and I am quite happy. You have to clean it sometimes, and it is a bit messy, but you can do that in the sink after emptying it in the bin, so it's not like dust is going to be flying around.

I am happy to avoid buying and changing bags.

A lesser one excepted when your bags were retired from market -> need to buy a new vacuum even if the older one was still functional.
We have a Numatic Henry and it runs circles around the most expensive Dyson. While the Dyson seems more powerful on paper, in reality the Henry sucks up more dust, grime and pet hair. Our Henry is 18 years old, survived falling down the stairs, a complete house remodel and basic family life with kids.

The bags only need to be changed a few times per year, and changing is a breeze. Compare that to the Dyson where you have to empty the bin every other time you use it. Oh, and the Henry doesn't seem to lose power as the bag gets fuller since the motor is placed on top of the cleaner.

Every part can be replaced (and are still available, for a 18 year old vacuum cleaner!) but as I said, they're nearly indestructible. And cheaper than a Dyson.

There's a reason why professional cleaners use them, I guess.

Henry owner here: totally agree.

Also, unlike a fancy Dyson, it's designed to be bashed around, yanked around and generally abused. It's the Nokia 3310 of vacuums. And if a part breaks, because they're used commercially it's cheap and easy to replace.

Brexit means more expensive cars from abroad. The guy wants to make a UK car for the UK market, I guess... We'll know when they don't make a version with the steering wheel on the left :)
Likewise.

Brexiteers hold him up as a paragon of British engineering and entrepreneurship. But he took an already-solved problem and "re-imagined" it with twice the cost and power requirement.

I'll stick with my Vax, thx.

Dyson sucks better than Vax!
Don't know about Vax but my 17-year old Dyson performs just as efficiently as when I bought it. I notice that most of the new cleaners in the market in my region appear to copy Dyson's cyclonic separation idea - because it works!
What I'm getting from you two is that you're desperate to insert Brexit into any conversation.
Par for the course with identity-politics bores, I'm afraid. It would be the same if the story was about JCB. Terrible idea to listen to the tiny minority of British companies who actually manufacture things the world is enthusiastic about buying :-)
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> But he took an already-solved problem and "re-imagined" it with twice the cost and power requirement.

And then shipped production off to Malaysia and Singapore.

They make pretty good handheld vacuums. I have a miele upright also, but nowadays tend to use the dyson v7 for a lot of quick stuff instead.
They're the Apple of the vacuum cleaning world. They were good at marketing, launched baglessness as a major new innovation which allowed them to completely dominate the market until everyone else copied it, their self-consciously different style also found many imitators, and since then the overengineering has been the brand's chief selling point.
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But they have "digital" motors. A concept that hurts my brain.

But seriously he probably just wants to be like Bosch. A desirable place to buy you electronic components. Otherwise reinventing cars is what sunk Sinclair...

James Dyson pitches himself as a sort of British Steve Jobs. His products take commercial fan technology and put it in consumer tech, with lots of silvery plastic, and sell for a lot of money. Engineering wise it's nothing particularly special. They have done well out of sueing competitors who do similar things.

Sadly it's a company that invests more in boasting about how great it is at engineering as it does in actual engineering.

There is no way in hell a Dyson electric car is going to have any impact on any market. This is more of a PR stunt than an indication of any real product. It's more about building the brand (of Dyson and Sir James Dyson) than anything.

'James Dyson pitches himself as a sort of British Steve Jobs'. Does he or is it others who say this? Where is the quote?

As to the supposed comparison by others, someone from Dyson said '“Apple makes a stylistic product; we don’t have any designers at our company. We start out with the internals first and then match the style to it.”

I'm very interested to see what Dyson comes up with here, but I'm surprised they've considered undertaking the entire vehicle design and manufacturing process, and not just developing powertrains for other companies to use.
I think this is one sign of the changing times for the automotive industry. Dyson has a lot of technologies required to manufacture an electric car in-house. Batteries and their control, electric motors, and of course they manufacture their products too. So getting into car manufacturing doesn't seem to be a huge stretch.
Yep, EVs have turned automobiles into consumer electronics.

Hopefully that doesn't mean they will be made to be unservicable by third parties, disposable, and replaced regularly.

Is that really that far off from the current state of a cars? We had a 69 gmc truck growing up and I could point o the parts in the engine and understand how everything worked. Later ok we got a 97 gmc truck and damn it’s way more complex. I know it can still be worked on by anyone and is definitely serviceable but what is a 2017 model like I’m sure even more complex with onboard computers etc...
You can still walk right up to the parts department counter and order OEM replacement parts for anything on the vehicle, just like the dealer can.

The computerized bits are well isolated control modules and are generally treated as black boxes which either work or are replaced as a unit. But that doesn't encompass the entire vehicle, the vast majority of the vehicle is still very servicable, all the mechanical bits haven't really changed that much from the 60s.

I've rebuilt engines on cars and motorcycles, modern and old, many computerized with EFI, you generally don't worry about the inner workings of the computers unless you're modifying things.

In my experience the more modern stuff is actually simpler having fewer vacuum lines and archaic rube goldberg machines for control systems.

For some parts of ICE vehicles, you are limited to original replacement parts already, e.g. the motor control units. It is something to watch out for, but considering, how many old cars have been converted to electric, using Tesla parts from crashed vehicles, the future for servicing might look actually good.
The points you listed make sense to me in regards to manufacturing powertrains - but what they'll get caught up with (in my mind) are things like safety structure development/ crash testing, suspension development, brake technology, large-scale metal forming, etc etc. I don't know if their current injection moulded plastic vacuum bodies will scale up to car-sized manufacturing.

They may of course have all these sorts of avenues covered already, and I might just be thinking too hard.

Wrong! 3000 amps are different than 5 amps. Vacuum batteries are a a toy compared to liquid cooled 300 kg battery pack. There is already one electric car manufacturer that had (has?) problems with manufacturing. Vacuum and an electric car are very different domains.
I wouldn't claim that there isn't significant development to be done, but Dyson has engineers who have experiences with long-term battery handling for example. With lots of experience, designing electric motors. Even if they are at a different scale, compare that to the traditional car company, which has zero experience with batteries and electric motors.
Powertrains? IIRC Tesla already made the patents for their powertrains public. Dyson only has experience making very small motors; for their larger vacuums for example they already use a 3rd party motor (panasonic?, there's an AvE video out there somewhere).
I’m genuinely curious as to what they’re working on: my guess is it’ll have spherical wheels, a climate control system with cyclone technology and expensive air filters you’re supposed to wash every 500 miles, be silvery plastic with orange highlights, dock with a dedicated wall charger, feature a drivechain with Dyson Digital Motor(TM) technology, and cost a lot of money.
> spherical wheels

This is our chance to get ball-wheels on cars. Imagine having 4-wheel 360 degree turning!

dyson is that company that make nightmare fuel hand dryers?
I'm all for alternatives so that I can choose away from Tesla and away from some heavy-handed oil-producing countries in what/who I support.

No idea if Dyson is going to make a good electric car or not but I sure hope they do -- another big player in the space also means more innovation so I'm up for that, and Dyson prides themselves in unique engineering so maybe they'll make a thing that will actually help other manufacturers regardless of whether their car is a success or not.

Is it just me or has Dyson's brand really benefitted from The Terminator association?
It's crazy that they got money from the government towards this when their profits are so insanely high. James Dyson is very tight-fisted (I used to work there; that is part of the reason I left).