Coronavirus outbreak: Tesla factory to be re-purposed to make ventilators, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk pledges that if there is a dire need for ventilators in the United States as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, one of the Tesla factories will be repurposed to produce ventilators, the statement came after Dr. Raja Abbas who also happens to be a Tesla owner tweeted at Elon Musk to take more steps in helping the country in these trying times.

Raja even asked Elon Musk that he has to ‘stop being an idiot’ as the Tesla CEO was recommending a drug named Chloroquine as a potential treatment for the COVID-19 Coronavirus in an earlier tweet:

To this Nate Silver whos is the author of the book The Signal and the Noise tweeted at Elon Musk expressing his concern that the need has already arrived at our doorstep, we need the ventilators now, how much is Tesla making? To which Elon Musk replied:

According to the Los Angeles Times report, Tesla Fremont car factory is only working at 1/3 of its capacity after the Almeda county’s lockdown orders, only 2,500 employees are coming to work at Tesla’s Fremont, California car manufacturing plant. Yesterday the Sherrif’s office released a statement mentioning Tesla as ‘not an essential business’ — after starting ventilator production, the company will be ‘essential’ IMO.

However, Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster thinks that Tesla Inc. (TSLA) can survive multiple quarters of the shutdown, he stated that the lockdown will have a ‘little impact’ the on the Silicon Valley automaker’s long term future (Source: Yahoo Finance via Buzzfeed).

In the meanwhile New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio directly reached out to Elon Musk on Twitter and requested his help in providing the ventilators as the NYC government anticipates a shortage of ventilators in the coming weeks, Elon Musk responded to the Mayor’s inquiry and ensured him that the Tesla team will get in touch to understand the requirements.

COVID-19 cases in the United States reached a staggering figure of 10,442 total with 150 deaths, the data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested, the data on the CDC website was last updated yesterday at the time of this writing. It remains to be seen if Tesla will need to start making ventilators or the coronavirus situation cools down in the meantime.

The last tweet by Elon Musk was also on the coronavirus situation in the United States, in his opinion, we should not overreact or spread fear as the latest data suggests a drop in new COVID-19 cases in the country but the testing is increasing, he said:

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