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The reason for letting Dyson's into the electric vehicle market is also the reason for its electric vehicle plan to fail: they are too easy to make.This British company, known for its expensive vacuum cleaner, has given up its investment of 2 billion pounds (S $ 3.4 billion) to compete for electric vehicle programs competing with companies such as Tesla and Fushi Gegen.
According to Goldman Sachs Group's research, cars equipped with internal combustion engines need about 30,000 parts, while electric vehicles only need 11,000 parts.The lower complexity of electric vehicles has reduced the threshold for entering the automotive market, making the number of new car manufacturers surged.
In the past few years, dozens of startups have joined the competition from Tesla and Lucid Motors in the United States to Byton and NIO.According to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, since 2011, electric vehicle startups have raised $ 18 billion in funds, announced 43 models, and the productivity of 3.9 million vehicles with an annual output of 3.9 million vehicles.The competition in this market is fierce.
Dyson's unreasonable interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of the 2018 profit (EBITDA) reached 1.1 billion pounds, so that this relatively small British manufacturer had some money to play, but to players in electric car playersIt is a big challenge to stand out.
Compared with the wealth owned by the car giant, these benefits are a drop in the sea.These car giants are welcome to get rid of the epoch -making transformation from dirty internal combustion engines. Only Fushi Weigen announced that it plans to invest 52 billion US dollars in electrification. The goal is to produce at least 2 million electric vehicles annually by 2025.Fushi Weigen has a distribution network in 153 countries or regions, making the sales of electric vehicles easier.
Dyson also needs a faster return on investment than these old car manufacturers in order to keep the electric vehicle planned.The small scale and nature of this market will make it difficult for fast investment returns.In the second quarter of this year, only 575,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide, accounting for 3.7%of the entire automotive market.
The ambitions of British companies controlled by Billionaire Inventor James Dyson will not be the last to lose.Other companies are also struggling.Due to the continuous intensification of losses, the stock price of Shanghai Weilai Automobile invested by Tencent and Baidu has fallen by 86%compared with the peak value of stock fundraising for the first time last year.Faraday Future is a US company that has obtained Chinese funds and just climbed back from the edge of bankruptcy.
In view of the cruel market environment, Dyson's decision to withdraw from the electric vehicle market seems wise.Such projects usually adversely affect the company's other businesses. In terms of Dyson's situation, it is its laptops and hair dryers.After Apple launched the automobile manufacturing project in 2015, it must be cautiously controlled how many software engineers transferred to this secret project from its iOS team (the team produced the most important operating system of iPhone and iPad).
For Dyson, developing electric vehicles may be distracted.In the letter of employees, Dyson admits that he believes that there is no way to make electric vehicles commercial feasibility.In this way, it is better to focus resources on its own core competitiveness, otherwise the failure will be more painful in the future, and may even cause serious damage.
The author is Bloomberg columnist
Translation of Wu Hanjun
