Chinese company Dreame makes vacuum cleaners. Very good ones, apparently. But at some point, someone in the boardroom presumably looked at a dustbuster and thought: “You know what this needs? 1,000 horsepower.”

And so, in 2025, Dreame announced its Star Project: a rather ambitious plan to build luxury electric cars, including a machine that would apparently become the world’s fastest car.

There were glossy concepts, including the Nebula NEXT 01 sports coupe and NEXT 01X SUV. There were plans for showrooms in Saudi Arabia, the UAE,

Qatar and Iraq. And then there was a $10 million Super Bowl advert featuring a vacuum cleaner, lawnmower and futuristic sports car transforming into robots before launching a flaming ball.

It was, in other words, completely normal. Sadly, reality has now arrived, wearing an accountant’s tie.

Dreame has pulled the plug on its automotive ambitions, saying that cars require lengthy development cycles, vast investment and, rather inconveniently, the Chinese car market is currently engaged in a price war resembling several thousand companies fighting over the last sausage roll.

The project never reached mass production, and its workforce has shrunk from nearly 1,000 people to a few dozen. Dreame says the technology won’t go to waste. Its clever bits will be redirected into robotics, smart mobility and AI.

So the dream of the world’s fastest Dreame is over. For now, at least, the fastest thing it makes is probably the bloke running away from the boardroom.