The company best known for its vacuums and domestic appliances bought the disused airfield at Hullavington two years ago and has already spent £84m on renovated two hangars built in 1938 at the 517-acre site. The next phase of the airfield's development would take Dyson’s total investment to £200m.
About 400 automotive staff are now based at Hullavington and a further three buildings will open in the coming months, offering an additional 15,000m2 of testing space.
Jim Rowan, chief executive of Dyson, predicted that Hullavington would soon become a “world-class vehicle testing campus”.
“We are now firmly focused on the next stage of our automotive project strengthening our credentials as a global research and development organisation,” he said.
Sir James Dyson is yet to reveal any details about his electric car, or where it will be built, and no prototype has yet been produced although it has been in development since 2015. However, it is expected to be aimed at the upper end of the market, to rival Tesla, will have some driverless features and may not even look like a conventional vehicle. “What we're doing is quite radical”, he said.
