The Chinese auto industry is riding high these days – so high that the Chinese government is starting to get worried that competition might have gotten out of hand. But that hasn’t stopped ambitious companies, even some from outside the car business, from trying to get in on the action. The latest example is a firm called Dreame – better known for robot vacuums, pool cleaners, and air purifiers – that has set its sights on creating a hypercar, according to Carscoops. Before you scoff, recall that back in 2017, vacuum tycoon James Dyson explored developing an electric car.
Ironically, Dreame got its start in 2017, and has evidently achieved some level of success in both the Chinese and international markets. The goal now is to take the auto industry by storm and roll out a Bugatti-beater, a hypercar that can outrun all the other hypercars. “We are one of the very few Chinese brands to quickly rise to the top in every market we enter,” the company said in a statement. “For this reason, we are often called the ‘Apple of China.’ We know how to make global users pay for innovation and applaud our experience.”
Hype is free
Dreame’s intentions are all spectacularly vague at this point, although CarScoops reported that the company has formed an automotive division, emulating Xiaomi, which of course has been able make the jump from gadgets to cars. It’s also not clear that hypercar buyership is actually growing, but staking a pre-emptive claim there certainly ensures that Dreame will benefit from abundant hype, immediately distinguishing its objectives from existing EV manufacturers in China’s increasingly crowded marketplace.
If you believe the reporting, Dreame will produce its um, dream car by 2027. The plan is to tap China’s vast EV manufacturing infrastructure, an unsurprising business move, but one that might actually conflict with the whole hypercar idea. Bugattis, Koenigseggs, Paganis and the like are all exotic machines that certainly benefit from embedded automaking know-how, but that are also bespoke creations for a reason – bespoke commands top dollar. I wouldn’t expect the Dreame hypercar to be cheap.
Benefit of the doubt
This is one of those great wait-and-see opportunities. Maybe Dreame pulls it off, maybe they don’t. If they don’t, the vacuums still look perfectly desirable. Dyson, after all, bailed out on its EV project without any particularly negative impacts. That was back when there was quite a bit of chatter about an Apple Car, another project that’s now kaput. Still, over the past few years, Chinese tech companies have shown that they can build cars, so this whole discussion has been rebooted.
The worst case here is that Dreame winds up looking silly for aiming so high. Then again, you could have leveled that charge at anybody who decided to do the hypercar thing. And before that, the supercar thing. The itch never seems to go away, and at some point China has to start producing the kind of crazy high-performance vehicles that we in the West have enjoyed for decades.
