University of Michigan, casting doubt on Sakti3's technology. Electric vehicles In September 2017, company founder James Dyson announced via email to employees that the company had 400 people working on a battery electric vehicle, secretly in the works for two years, which it hoped to release by 2021. Further information about the company's plans emerged in February 2018, with news of three electric vehicles under development as part of an estimated $3B project. In October 2019, Dyson said its engineers had developed a "fantastic electric car" but that it would not be taken further because it was not "commercially viable" and also lack of potential buyers for this project. The project employed over 500, most of them in the UK. "This is not a product failure, or a failure of the team, for whom this news will be hard to hear and digest," Dyson wrote to his company. Medical ventilators In March 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dyson announced that they would be supporting UK hospitals by manufacturing ventilators. On 25 March, it was announced that the British government had ordered 10,000 ventilators from the company, subject to their design passing stringent medical tests. Engineers produced a device named CoVent, but on 24 April the company said the ventilator was "no longer required". James Dyson Award and James Dyson Foundation The James Dyson Award is an international student design award running in 18 countries. It is run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson's charitable trust, and is presented jointly to students and their university. Over 727 schools in Great Britain and Northern Ireland have used Dyson's educational "Ideas Boxes", sent to teachers and pupils, in order to learn more about the design process. The James Dyson Foundation also provides bursaries and scholarships to aspiring engineers. Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology In November 2016, James Dyson announced plans to open a higher education college to address the engineering skills gap in the UK. In September 2017 it welcomed its first cohort of undergraduates, partnering with the University of Warwick to offer BEng degrees in engineering, whilst also employing them as engineers three days a week. The second cohort of students, joining in September 2018, was 40% female, compared to a national average of 15.1% for engineering subjects. Lawsuits Amway In 1985, Dyson sued Amway for copyright infringement of a Dyson dual cyclone prototype machine. Dyson claimed that