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Comment by coredog64 | Hacker News Reader

The US already has a model for this though: During WW2, Ford Motor Company didn't stroke Henry Ford's ego by designing and building their own bombers -- they license built B-24s.

Yes, retooling costs. But tooling costs as well, and costs more besides.

With Elon's PR reach, I would expect that he could get at least one vent manufacturer to license a design to him for a dollar/handshake/whatever.

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Elon's companies are also in parallel working with an existing manufacturer (Medtronic) to produce vents of their design (or more specifically to produce a part that is a bottleneck in their production). Putting a small percentage of resources to trying out a second model (this one) is just good risk management.

Tooling does not cost when they already have it, that is why they are focusing on ways to repurpose parts they are already producing as parts of the ventilator.

Tesla has partnered with Medtronic to increase their production capacity (https://www.massdevice.com/tesla-to-reopen-new-york-facility...). So Tesla isn't approaching this as a hackathon project, they've partnered with one of the biggest medical manufacturers who no doubt are offering their resources and expertise in this field, something Tesla obviously has none of which shows that they're trying to prove their serious about helping out

It took two years for Ford to start producing B-24s, leading credence to the time-cost of retooling.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run

Because you said Ford, he was an anti-Semite, and his company was also part of the Nazi war machine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/n...

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryfo...

There are two major differences, though. Cars are much more similar to airplanes than they are to ventilators, and the lead time for the war effort is much longer. We missed the window for rushing experimental ventilators into production. Looking at projections[1], there's about a 5-10 day window to get these into the hands of doctors. China donating 1000 ventilators to NYC is a much bigger deal.

1: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-where-is...

Cars are about as similar to airplanes as airplanes are to washing machines.

Airplanes are exponentially more complicated than cars.

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