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Shift to electric continues as Dyson unveils latest car plans and Easyjet says it could be flying electric planes within a decade

Published: 12:17 27 Sep 2017 BST

electric cars
The electric snowball keeps on rolling...

The seismic shift towards electric vehicles took another step forward today, with UK firms Dyson and Easyjet PLC (LON:EZJ) both unveiling their latest plans to go green.

British vacuuming legend Sir James Dyson revealed he is building an electric car that will be “radically different” compared to anything else on the market.

The billionaire said he had hired 400 engineers in Wiltshire who have been working on the £2.5bn project since 2015.

No prototype has been built yet but the electric motor is ready and two different battery types are under development that he claimed were already more efficient than what’s out there at the moment.

“We don’t have an existing chassis…We’re starting from scratch. What we’re doing is quite radical.”

Dyson hinted that the cars won’t come cheap, which would line them up in direct competition with Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA).

As for where the cars will be produced, that’s likely to be in the Far East where the markets have “reacted [to electric] more quickly”, although Dyson did say that they will still count as a British export.

Easyjet teams up with Wright Electric

Sticking with electric but within a different method of transport, easyJet said it could be carrying passengers on electric planes within a decade.

The UK budget airline has teamed up with US firm Wright Electric which is working on a battery-propelled aircraft which can fly for up to two hours.

Easyjet said the new planes would be used on short-haul flights such as from London to Paris.

Don’t expect to be on one of the new planes – which are reportedly 50% quieter and 10% cheaper than traditional jets – when you next fly abroad though.

For now, boss Carolyn McCall is setting her goals a little further out, saying that she wants every short haul flight to be electric within 20 years.

“For the first time in my career I can envisage a future without jet fuel and we are excited to be part of it,” she said. “It is now more a matter of when, not if, a short-haul electric plane will fly.”

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