UK's richest man spent $940 million of own cash to build EV to rival Tesla

James Dyson, UK’s richest man with an estimated wealth of 16.2 billion pounds (around ₹1.5 lakh crore), decided to spend 500 million pounds (around ₹7,125 crore) of his own money to produce an electric car that he claims can rival even Tesla.

The news comes seven months after the billionaire had decided to can the project to come up with this electric car. Dyson’s company decided to reveal the electric car, codenames N526, during an interview of James Dyson for topping the Sunday Times list of richest people.

The Dyson car was initially planned as an electric SUV that aimed to challenge Tesla’s electric vehicles. During the interview, Dyson revealed that and he had to fund about 500 million pound from his own pocket to get the scrapped project off the ground.

Dyson claimed that the seven-seater electric SUV will have a range of 965 kms (600 miles). The figures are impressive when once compares the kind of range popular Tesla models have. A Tesla Model S can go 610 kms (379 miles) and the Model X can hit 505 kms (314 miles) on a single charge.

Sir James Dyson, Britain’s richest man, spent £500m developing an electric car to rival Tesla’s. Then he scrapped it before the first prototype took to the road. He tells John Arlidge why https://t.co/mIVmVFnN6D

— The Sunday Times Magazine (@TheSTMagazine) May 17, 2020

During the interview, Dyson also said that the electric SUV, made from aluminium weighed around 2.6 tons, had a top speed of 201 kmph (125 mph), and could go fromzero to 100 kmph in just 4.8 seconds. It had a twin 200kW electric motors that could produce 536 bhp of power and 480 lb ft of torque.

Dyson went on to describe the design of the electric SUV as something unseen in the market. The sporty-looking SUV, measuring five metres long, two metres wide and 1.7 metres tall, features a windscreen which “rakes back more steeply than on aFerrari," and wheels that “are bigger than on any production car on the market."

Dyson revealed the reason behind scrapping the project was the immense cost to build it and the lack of profitability. He said how he blew more than 500 million pound of his own money to fund the project. He also said that to make profit he needed to sell each of these electric SUVs for no less than 150,000 pound (around ₹1.37 crore).