Tesla Will Help Medtronic By Making Ventilators at its NY Gigafactory

While Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have initially downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, the electric vehicle maker is now coming to the rescue.

Tesla has said that it will help make Medtronic ventilators at its gigafactory in New York. The company will be converting a New York production plant to make medical devices instead of solar power cells.

Medtronic has been trying to boost production of ventilators that are used to help the sickest COVID-19 patients.

Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak discussed the partnership in an interview with CNBC, and said that Tesla would be making
“one of the products that we make, that is not our prime product right now [but] one that is perfectly suitable at least in some of these instances.”

Musk took to Twitter and wrote, “Giga New York will reopen for ventilator production as soon as humanly possible. We will do anything in our power to help the citizens of New York.” Tesla’s “gigafactory” in Buffalo, N.Y., was built to produce solar panels.

Musk had been in talks with Medtronic earlier this month about ventilator production.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) nor Medtronic PLC (NYSE: MDT) and have not been compensated for this article.