While Apple has been greatly hyped and got nowhere with its car bid, Dyson, who is famous for re-inventing the vacuum cleaner, has been quietly getting on with 400 Wiltshire engineers since 2015. In fact people only became aware of the project when it was accidently leaked in a government report.

It has set him back £2.5 billion and while there is no prototype, the car’s electric motor is ready, while two different battery types are under development that he claimed were already more efficient than in existing electric cars.

Dyson said consumers would have to “wait and see” what the car would look like: “We don’t have an existing chassis … We’re starting from scratch. What we’re doing is quite radical.”

Sadly it is going to cost an arm and a leg to buy so while it might end up being the most efficient on the market, most of us are not going to be able to afford one.

He told the Guardian that the car will count as a British export although it will probably be manufactured in the Far East.

While the UK remained a “frontrunner” for the production base, he added: “We’ll choose the best place to make it and that’s where we’ll make it … Wherever we make the battery, that’s where we will make the car. We see a very large market for this car in the Far East … We want to be near where our markets are and I believe the Far East has reacted [to electric] more quickly than the UK or Europe.”

Research and development work on the car will continue at a new facility being built on a former Second World War airfield at Hullavington, close to Dyson’s headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

However it will not be driverless. Dyson thinks total hands-off driving is some way off.