Dreame shows a jet-powered concept EV in SF

Dreame

Dreame Technology, a Chinese vacuum company, is in San Francisco this week to showcase its newest technology from wet-dry vacs to pool cleaners to high-powered EVs.

Yes, the smart home company is dipping into electric cars. “We are reimagining what a car should be,” John Warner, Dreame’s chief of design, said on stage Monday.

This is Dreame’s latest vehicle after unveiling its first concept the Nebula Next 01 supercar at CES in Las Vegas in January. Warner joked about the reaction after the consumer electronics show, “That made people say, ‘Wait, a vacuum company did what?’”

People are asking that yet again.

On Monday at SF’s Palace of Fine Arts, the Nebula NEXT 01 Concept Jet Edition took it even further for the vacuum-maker.

The sports car is full of fantastical specifications, including the mind-numbing .9 seconds to go from zero to 60 mph. The fastest mainstream EVs on the road today hit this just under 2 seconds. That’s thanks to a dual rocket-booster system with 100kN of thrust and 150-millisecond response time. A solid-state battery introduces a sulfide-based ultra-high-capacity battery with over 340-mile range.

Dubbed an “AI-Defined Vehicle,” Dreame has an AI agent called Metis and plans for autonomous driving (with a new LiDAR unit, a sensing tool that Tesla notoriously refuses to use) to be natively built into the entire vehicle.

While two concept vehicles were physically on display Monday in a bright green and red hue, notably absent was any footage of prototype testing, road or track time or any indication that there’s a real car behind all the computer-generated imagery and videos. It’s easy to get carried away with concepts. But that’s all they are until a production vehicle hits the road.

Concept vehicles are known for pushing tech, design and features forward that eventually materialize in a vehicle even if the concept as a whole never arrives. With the solid-state battery, automotive LiDAR unit and certain AI features, Dreame could open up new technology for other established car companies.

The Dreame concepts also come at a time when established automakers are struggling to get high-tech EVs off the ground. Sony Honda Mobility’s Afeela 1 was literally in pre-production at a Honda factory when the once-video-game-filled-concept car was killed last month. The first deliveries were expected by the end of the year. Honda’s solo venture into concept EVs with its 0 Series never materialized into the real things.

The disconnect was strong at the Palace of Fine Arts, especially after the EV federal tax credit expired last year under the Trump administration. Affordability is top of mind with gas prices at record highs (as of writing the national average for a gallon of gas is over $4.22, up from over $3.16 a year ago). Google Trends data shows the search term “affordable EV” was at a five-year high throughout March.

The Jet Edition claims high range and other egregiously ambitious stats, but at what cost? When value is the preferred feature of today’s EVs, a jet-powered hypercar sounds like a pipe dream.

The Dreame Next launch event runs through Thursday in San Francisco.