Elon Musk donates 1,255 ventilators in fight against coronavirus, California governor says

Last Friday, we published a story about General Motors and Tesla after the two companies pledged to retool their operations in the fight against coronavirus. Today, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk makes good of his promise and donated more than 1,000 ventilators to officials in Los Angeles to meet demand as the pandemic becomes more severe, according to report from Bloomberg.

“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week,” California Governor Gavin Newsom told reporters in a briefing Monday. “They arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s an heroic effort.”

In a tweet late Monday night, Musk said: “Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!”

Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2020

Tesla joins General Motors Co. in providing ventilators. GM plans to use some of its excess factory space to build ventilators and has people looking into how that would be done, said the person, who asked not to be identified describing a private conversation.