Dyson bids to reinvent cleaning market with launch of WashG1

Conventional mops spread dirt rather than pick dirt up. Enter Dyson which says its hi-tech wet mop is more ‘enjoyable and effective’, with Australia one of the first places where the WashG1 will be sold.

Dyson's WashG1 represents a new frontier for the vacuum clearer maker.

James Dyson is making one of his biggest bets yet.

The British engineer who reinvented vacuums, and then took his cyclonic technology to supersonic hair dryers, now wants to disrupt the humble mop.

The themes that run through Dyson’s space-age designs has been all about moving air around. On Tuesday, Sir James will step into a new frontier with his latest invention: a hard-floor cleaner that uses water, not suction.

“People clean floors with mops, and it’s pretty old-fashioned – it’s a funny way to do it,” Sir James says in an interview.

“When you’re mopping, it is spreading dirt rather than picking dirt up. So we wanted to develop a machine that picked the dirt up and left the floors looking brand new.

“It’s a much more enjoyable and more effective way of cleaning hard floors than the current mopping method.”

The Dyson WashG1, which retails for $999, has been years in the making and is the outcome of a massive investment by the 77-year-old British inventor. It has undergone intensive testing, including taking on different common household spills around the world, from sand and mud in Sydney to cat litter in Tokyo.

The luxury floor cleaner represents a small but significant shift for the company that came from nowhere four decades ago to become a household name.

For Dyson it is the first use of water in a handheld device and marks a step away from a long-held principle of powerful air dynamics.

Australia will become a proving ground and is set to be one of the first markets in the world where the WashG1 will be available.

James Dyson is moving into a new market.

The aim of the WashG1 is to remove wet spills, stains and dry dirt simultaneously. The device uses more than two dozen pulse water jets backed by two counter directional rollers. The real technology lies in the separation of dirty water from clean water in the cleaning head, with the used water immediately being directed into a removable tank. Unlike mops, this means the cleaner isn’t just spreading the mess on the floor or creating a mini-flood.

One tank is enough to cover 300sq m, slightly bigger than a tennis court.

With Dyson still owned and controlled by Sir James, the WashG1 project has a deeply serious side. Homeowners are increasingly turning their back on carpet for hard floors such as wood or tiles, where there is less chance of trapping dust. That means a new approach is needed to keeping the floors clean. However, the technology behind the WashG1 is essentially creating a new market segment for Dyson. At the same time, it will need to prove itself over mops as well as the stick and conventional vacuums that it already makes.

Dyson WashG1 will be launched on Tuesday.

Sir James concedes it was quite a difficult machine “to get absolutely right”.

“We’re pioneering in a sense that we’ve now got to show you how you can mop floors better with our existing products.”

Dyson’s popularity and its obsessive focus on design and ease of use often results in the manufacturer being described as the Apple of home cleaning. But Sir James dismisses this saying Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs was a great businessman and was “far more successful”.

“I’m an engineer and I started Dyson to develop new technology and built products based around the technology I developed. I don’t really pretend to be a businessman,” he said.

“I love technology and I love developing. I don’t even really do business plans. I’m not trying to be a billion-dollar company. I’m just doing what I enjoy doing.”