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Comment by product50 | Hacker News Reader

I knew someone at Hacker News will make a comment like this. Hacker News is cynicism at its finest.

"I can't imagine any hospital or doctor careless enough to connect one of these to a patient, even in this current emergency."

This is utter BS. Imagine that you are in a situation where you are trying to ration lives by selecting who gets access to a ventilator. Won't you not use this device then too?

Please, for god's sake, appreciate and be thankful that we have such great companies in US trying to help our people out. For perspective, if you were in a developing country, like India etc., all you have is hope and no company will be stepping up (they just don't have the technical wherewithalls).

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Actually, we had a (world renowned) medical company where I live annouce an emergency ventilator design, complete with functioning prototype. The design was quickly torn apart in public by doctors working on actual Covid-19 patients (the caseload is still manageable here). The device was then shelved.

If a well-known medical company can produce something that doctors say is essentially worse than doing nothing, due to the lung physiology of Covid-19 patients, then you betcha Tesla can end up doing the same.

Like others have said: start from a design that works, and scale it up. This is not a time for NIH.

Yes - of course. Tesla and GM shouldn't even try to help out because obviously they will build the wrong thing.

What BS. Take your cynicism elsewhere. You literally are the living embodiment of my point above.

No, you misinterpret what I said. They should most definitely help out - by aiding in manufacturing a known working design at bigger scale.

DO you realize that these are car manufacturing companies trying to figure out how they can build ventilators. To build based on existing know-how will likely be incredibly expensive and prohibitive. As such, it is reasonably to expect them build these ventilators based on the realities of their current supply chain, technology, factory capabilities etc.

It is so surprising that I have to explain this to a tech audience.

How is starting over from scratch less expensive?

Given the time to explore cheaper parts, manufacturing processes, etc., starting over can always result in a cheaper device.

> can always result in a cheaper device.

  ^^^^^^^^^^ oxymoron alert

They are doing exactly that already, partnered with an established company with proven design to help them ramp up production by manufacturing some hard-to-come-by parts.

And then Musk decided to burn some money on top of that, trying to find a way to produce even more machines from existing parts and/or parts that he can get more easily. And people give him shit for that? Seriously?

Has their effort to produce a ventilator like that a high chance of failure? Sure. But maybe their hail marry will succeed and save lives after all. And if they fail, at least they will have tried.

The only actual problem here would be if they produced a worse-than-useless machine that kills people but is put into use anyway. This hasn't happened yet, tho, but people right now are attacking this strawman viciously anyway.

Well, except there's a big issue here, which is that Tesla can really only manufacture from parts that Tesla has, unless there are clear parts availability that can be quickly ramped up and delivered to the specific factories and in the form those factories can use.

Which is why the medical community basically shrugged at Tesla's PR pronouncement about being the white knight that will save everyone with their DIY ventilators built from car parts that might arrive sometime within 18 months if they stick to the normal Tesla production schedule.

And that was before Tesla mixed up BiPAP machines with actual ventilators...

Sure. They might pull it off though. It does seem consistent with their ethos to at least try.

Do you have a link for the story? It sounds like a good case study.

Agree with you, but just one small nit pick is that Mahindra (Indian car manufacturer) is now making ventilators too, and Anand Mahindra (CEO) has been exchanging tweets with Elon.

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