Dyson has earmarked around $4.6 billion for the project and is reportedly spending nearly $2 billion this year alone.

Mr Dyson, who is worth more than $A13 billion, joins a long line wealthy self-made entrepreneurs who cannot resist the temptation to go into the car business.

Latching on to the apparent opportunity that the EV opens up to cashed-up individuals for entering the car game, Mr Dyson appears to be well advanced with his plans to take on the likes of EV pioneer Elon Musk and Tesla.

In the lead-up to the 2021 launch, the company:

• Has opened an R&D centre on a former RAF airfield in Wiltshire in the UK, housed in two aircraft hangars. The centre includes a proving ground. The total investment including people is $A1.4 billion.
• Has already hired 400 people to work on the project with an additional 300 vacancies to be filled.
• Is building a two-level factory to assemble the cars in Singapore where the company already employs 1100 people in the city state to make its household products. Mr Dyson sees Singapore as a key strategic location for supplying cars to what will become the major EV markets – especially China.
• Has appointed Roland Krueger, the former president of Nissan’s Infiniti luxury division, to head up Dyson’s automotive division. Mr Krueger was with Infiniti from 2015 until he left earlier this year confirming that the “other opportunities” he was seeking at the time were in fact with Dyson. The company says that Mr Krueger’s appointment “proves how serious” it is about the car project.
• Has announced it will move the Dyson group headquarters to Singapore. In a letter to employees, the company said: “Singapore also offers access to high-growth markets as well as an extensive supply chain and a highly skilled workforce. Singapore has a comparatively high cost base, but also great technology expertise and focus. It is therefore the right place to make high-quality technology-loaded machines, and the right place to make our electric vehicle.”
• Expects that prototypes that are under development will be in production at the plant next year.

Mr Dyson says that the company is a logical designer of electric vehicles because of the huge knowledge it has built up in electric motors that it has developed for its innovative household products that specialise in high-speed air movement.

Dyson, which is moving nearly all is vacuum cleaners to cordless, is also looking for breakthrough auto battery technologies and is said to be developing solid-state batteries that are quicker to charge and hold more charge than the current crop of batteries.

By John Mellor