Dyson vacuums up auto experts

Top-shelf vacuum company Dyson is suspected of working on an autonomous electric vehicle future after attracting former automotive employees.

One of them is David Wyer, former director of purchasing at Aston Martin in the United Kingdom for 22 years, Bloomberg reports. Former chief of machine learning at Symantec Andrew Watson is another automotive specialist to start working at Sir James Dyson’s company in Malmesbury, UK.

The company also bought solid-state battery developer Sakti3 for US$90 million (A$114 million) in 2015, committing US$1.4 billion (A$1.77 billion) of investment in battery development.

Dyson has also hired Tesla’s former communications executive Ricardo Reyes, adding to speculation of a Dyson EV project in development.

Wyer posted on LinkedIn, “After 22 years at Aston Martin, today is my last day as I leave one great company to take up an exciting opportunity with another, as head of procurement at Dyson.”

Additional rumours swelled in 2016 when a “government document” said it is “funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric vehicle at their headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire”. It continued saying, “This will secure £174 million (A$282.6 million) of investment in the area, creating over 500 jobs, mostly in engineering”.

However, a corrected statement was quickly re-issued saying, “The Government is providing a grant of up to £16m (A$26 million) to Dyson to support research and development for battery technology at their site in Malmesbury”.

Also on LinkedIn, Dyson’s leading talent of acquisition within intelligent machine and connected technology Guy Franklin says the company is actively looking for connected technology staff.

“At Dyson we never stop transforming – technologies, and ourselves,” he writes. “Our global #Connected Technology team has more than doubled in size over the past 10 months [and] we’re now looking for a senior cloud developer to join us,” he says.

Dyson also writes on its LinkedIn profile, “The global team are looking for the best and brightest minds in robotics, AI, machine learning, vision systems, data – the list goes on”.