While the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread every day more people get sick. Since more people are infected, the medical sector does not have enough equipment and medicines to treat the virus. One of the most difficult issues to face remains on the most critical patients, because when their lungs become too inflamed, they lose the ability to breathe by their own and the usage of the ventilator is also to ensure that enough oxygen is continuing to circulate around the body as the patient recovers.
Musk’s company are making ventilators vehicles as a vital component for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Those ventilators will be different because they will be made of parts adapted from electric cars created by Tesla.
The coronavirus crisis has led Tesla and SpaceX to jump into the medical device industry to develop and manufacture components for Medtronic ventilators and donations of BiBAP breathing machines.
Tesla’s team shows off two different ventilator versions and they also show how the model might look while used by the hospitals. This ventilator is made of multiple components from Tesla’s cars, including the “Model 3” infotainment screen and computer and “Model S” suspension system. They are using these components to speed up the development and manufacturing process of the machines. “We want to use parts that we know really well that we know the reliability of, and we can go really fast and they are available in volume,” said Joseph Mardall, Tesla’s engineering directory.
But Tesla is not the only company working on the process to develop a ventilator design. Ford and General Motors have announced plans to also make a simplified version of these ventilators and more equipment useful for the medical community. Dyson, also received an order from the British government asking for 10,000 ventilators.
Tesla posted a new video where we first see their ventilator prototype spread out over a table before seeing it fully assembled. In the video, a group of engineers wearing surgical masks and gloves are demonstrating their creation which includes a touchscreen panel that tracks intake of oxygen and output of carbon dioxide (those components are used also in Model 3 electric sedan), infotainment computer system, lithium-ion battery, compressors, tubes and an oxygen mixing chamber. Tesla also called this just a prototype and there is not clear when or even if Tesla will be able to produce the devices in high volume, assuming the ventilators are tested and approved for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
