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Automakers, Tesla and SpaceX Explore Working on Ventilators (techcrunch.com) 89

Posted by EditorDavid from the assembly-lines dept.
"Just had a long engineering discussion with Medtronic about state-of-the-art ventilators," Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday. Medtronic tweeted that the talks also involved Tesla.

And TechCrunch notes that Musk tweeted on Friday that both Tesla and SpaceX employees are "working on ventilators...": His confirmation on Twitter that both of the companies he leads are working on ventilators comes a day after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a direct plea to Musk to help alleviate a shortage at hospitals gearing up to combat COVID-19. It's unclear how many employees are working on the ventilators and which Tesla factory -- it could be Buffalo, N.Y., Fremont, Calif., Sparks, Nev. or even Shanghai -- has dedicated space to the project...

Whatever Musk decides, his project still faces specific obstacles. Certified medical personnel will need to be involved in such an operation and ventilator hardware used in clinical settings still must be approved by the FDA, which could delay production...

GM, Volkswagen and Ford have all reportedly either talked to the White House or committed to looking at the problem. Volkswagen said Friday it has created a task force to look into using 3D printing to make hospital ventilators.
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Automakers, Tesla and SpaceX Explore Working on Ventilators More

Automakers, Tesla and SpaceX Explore Working on Ventilators

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  • Screw Regualtions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @06:43PM (#59857734)

    Whatever Musk decides, his project still faces specific obstacles. Certified medical personnel will need to be involved in such an operation

    Exactly why Musk should ignore any such bullshit and just makes whatever works. You can pretty easily test the efficacy of ventilators, and they for mostly for people with little else to lose.

    If I were any company working on anything Covid related, I would simply ignore whatever the FDA had to say about anything and start saving lives instead.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        First, can they pair with a manufacturer of ventilators, use their design, and just go

        That's actually what they're doing [twitter.com]. They're partnering with Medtronic [bloomberg.com], in a joint effort. Medtronic has a functional, medically-approved design. Tesla has a high-volume plastics shop and press line, its own tooling/automation company, and tens of thousands of employees - about 7500 of whom won't be allowed to work on cars for at least a couple weeks after Monday night.

        In the meantime, Tesla donated 250k respirators and

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

          They're partnering with Medtronic, in a joint effort.

          Oh really? [bloomberg.com]

          "'We had a great discussion with the Tesla team today,' Rob Clark, a spokesman for Dublin-based Medtronic, said by email. 'Medtronic will work with Tesla and others to try and solve this ventilator supply challenge.'"

          That's not how you announce a partnership. That's how you quietly say "Yes, we've talked with the crisis submarine guy, and we're coordinating with the professional medical device manufacturing community to increase production" whe

        • Tesla has a high-volume plastics shop and press line, its own tooling/automation company, and tens of thousands of employees

          None of which have gone through the rigorous and time-consuming demands of being approved to make devices that could kill people if not manufactured correctly.

          • yeah, when I need a ventilator, I want a guaranteed safe one or I won't take one at all... my odds are better with a ventilator, thanks. If they are manufacturing from plans supplied by Medtronics or a similar company, the design is certified. So long as the materials are up to spec, who cares who built it?
             
            Now... When this is all over, I hope the crisis built ventilators are put in storage and not in regular use.

            • I agree on the 'any ventilator is better than no ventilator at all', but that brings ups a whole host of other issues if there is a problem with them . However:

              If they are manufacturing from plans supplied by Medtronics or a similar company, the design is certified. So long as the materials are up to spec, who cares who built it?

              The FDA cares. A lot. It's not just the design of the finished product that needs approval, there are also strict regulations and validations on the equipment that builds the parts as well.

      • If I were any company working on anything Covid related, I would simply ignore whatever the FDA had to say about anything and start saving lives instead.

        I'm trying to figure out what would happen first: The feds come in and shut you down for ignoring FDA rules and regulations or the family of the first person to die on one of you unapproved ventilators sues you into oblivion.

    • Re:Screw Regualtions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @07:02PM (#59857784) Homepage
      FDA Approved the new Roche PCR testing machines IN ONE DAY.

      The Panic Mode is on. So if he actually produces a working ventilator, which is not a rocket science by the way (pun intended), it will be approved in less then a week. If things continue to become worse, it may not even be a week, it may end up with a conditional approval in a day using a special procedure similar to the Roche high volume PCR machines.

    • Such carelessness will _kill_ people. Ventilators handle moist air that _will_ be contaminated, and must be robust and sterilizable for repeated use. It also has to be be robust when operated by tired fools in medical environments.

      The bar may not be high, but I'd hope for a review by compoetent engineers and medical personnel to at least test it.

      • Re:Screw Regualtions (Score:4, Insightful)

        by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @07:46PM (#59857900)

        If you're in a situation like in Italy where triage leaves you with a choice of no ventilator (you die) or unapproved ventilator (it might kill you), which do you choose?

        Of course reviews and improvements should happen, but in an emergency it might save more lives to ship some unimproved product which has undergone only some very basic quality testing first while working on the improvements, rather than waiting for all test phases to complete. In situations like this, unfortunately patients become the test bed too. It might help too if the government provided some liability shield via legislature, or the lawyers of Ford, GM, etc, will not let the company produce any ventilators until it's too late.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by CanadianMacFan ( 1900244 )

          There's no need to reinvent the device. If such a device didn't exist then I would agree that more risk could be taken. However since there are already plans that are known to work safely there isn't a need to risk peoples lives with an untried version of a medical device.

          Besides, the last thing anyone needs is Musk himself trying to "improve" the design. He's shown repeatedly that he doesn't know what he's doing and if you tell him that he'll throw a hissy fit and call people names.

          All that is needed is ma

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Wow, each and every thing you said was wrong. Amazing.

          • There's no need to reinvent the device.

            Yes there is. Telsa will be manufacturing ventilators on an assembly line usually used for air conditioning components. The valves will be 3D-printed.

            They can't just take a pre-existing design because that would require an entirely new factory. There is no time for that.

      • Better to kill thousands now than one later? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @08:35PM (#59858016)

        Such carelessness will _kill_ people.

        Excuse me sir. but your caution will kill far more than "carelessness" of *professional engineers*, ever will.

      • SpaceX makes life support system for 7 people (Score:4, Insightful)

        by perpenso ( 1613749 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @08:39PM (#59858028)

        Such carelessness will _kill_ people. Ventilators handle moist air that _will_ be contaminated, and must be robust and sterilizable for repeated use. It also has to be be robust when operated by tired fools in medical environments. The bar may not be high, but I'd hope for a review by compoetent engineers and medical personnel to at least test it.

        You do realize that SpaceX has built a complete life support system for a crew of 7 people for the Dragon capsules. Some of the problems and some of the equipment might not be dissimilar from ventilators.

        • This type of certification is not, "This is a functional machine." it's, "This machine is suitable for a healthcare environment." In other words, it doesn't have nooks and crannies which make it hard to wash, it doesn't trap water or otherwise make it possible to grow and spread mildew, it has filters which can handle viruses which are much smaller than the dust particles that the system on those Dragon Capsules would have been designed to take care of. Etc.

          I'm not saying that Musk and co. can't do this,

          • The FDA can press the "certify" button in just a few hours right now, as has been reported in the news this week.

          • I expect that some of the complications you mention would also apply to spacecraft. That its not simply about dust particles, that biological concerns also need to be addressed.

        • I'm on board with having competent engineers work on a problem. I'm not on board with throwing away all precautions whatsoever, with "ignoring any such bullshit". Lower the barriers for the engineers to communicate with the FDA, to reduce the numerous forms and paperwork to get approval. Let the engineers who would be asked to review the design communicate more directly with the engineers trying to build systems quickly, without 6 months of paperwork and 7 layers of manger in between them to get their conce

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        You are forcing air into the lungs and letting it come back out again, the only critical part is the face mask that maintains pressure, the rest can be done by a large tank of compressed air and an electronically controlled valve and a very simple computer to control it. Push comes to shove a lot of diving gear would be useful. Keep them face down and the lungs higher than their mouths to promote drainage.

        The real thing is to turn all major hotels into temporary hospitals manned by GPs and their staff with

        • This is a very optimistic and simplistic analysis. Most modern ventilators have a reservoir that hydrates the air. How is that reservoir refilled and kept sterile? How are the hoses or components kept clean, even sterile, for re-use for the next patient? That "compressed air" is not how most ventilators work, they typically compress room air. Many hospitals do have a "medical air" supply. Some do not. How do you make the connectors to tap that supply, without the connectors failing or wearing out quickly?

          T

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        They are existing designs that just need to be manufactured in greater quantities.

        Test batches will be manufactured by Musk and others, and sent to a certification authority. Feedback will be incorporated into the production line, and then lots of devices will start spewing forth.

        Of course, you and your relatives are free to refuse treatment using these devices.

        I wish there was a "stupid, ill-thought" option for moderation.

        • Then you're describing Musk and his employees using just such caution as I'd hope for. _Good_. My concern was the "ignore any such bullshit" approach, which would be dangerous.

      • Now only if one of Musk's companies had experience with air handling systems and controlling humidity. Oh wait, more than one does.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, it'd be nice to have some people who actually know what a ventilator is supposed to do look things over -- say a pulmonologist and biomedical engineer. And it'd be nice if it operated in a way that is familiar to nurses rather than following some brain storm of some software engineer who's never been in an ICU. Now is not the time for the silicon valley culture of disruption.

      A device like a ventilator can easily kill people by not doing what it is supposed, or even *expected* to do.

    • Re:Screw Regualtions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:14PM (#59858184)

      If I were any company working on anything Covid related, I would simply ignore whatever the FDA had to say about anything and start saving lives instead.

      Maybe not that many lives. The proportion of COVID-19 patients that make it off vent (or worse, ECMO) is turning out to be rather dismal. That being said, the families and loved ones of those patients expect us to try.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iroll ( 717924 )

      It's all bullshit, just like your outrage. If Tesla licenses a design from Medtronic and builds the thing to Medtronic's specs, the fucking thing is already FDA approved. You don't have to get FDA approval for each assembly line, just for the device itself.

      • Tesla is not going to build a new factory to manufacture ventilators.

        They are going to modify existing assembly lines.

        That will be much easier to do if there is some flexibility in the product spec.

        • It's very likely that the parts that are needed are injection-molded plastics to certain specs. If anyone with injection-molding machines can make the parts, that's most of the game right there. It's not just final assembly, but the whole logistics chain for parts that needs to be thought about.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      While I agree on the sentiment and your ethical argument, if Musk does that, once the crisis is over he will get sued for decades to come. The problem is that too many people are fundamentally egoistic and care about nothing but themselves and will happily sue somebody that saved their life on the grounds that it could have done better (even if the alternatives were it not having been done at all).

      In the US, this gets amplified massively by a legal system that caters to this deranged victim ideology. Hence

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        If this escalates to a full blown crisis where people are dying from lack of resources and not just the virus itself, you can expect a lot of laws and regulations to be thrown out the window. Here in Norway we're now making plans for how to rush-upgrade nurses to intensive care nurses, medical students to nurse duties, restore expired licenses, conversion to makeshift hospitals and so on that'd be unthinkable under normal circumstances. I know you in the US had to make good Samaritan laws to protect laymen

      • I doubt he's impressed, he has a lot of lawyers.

    • That's all well and good, and there's certainly arguments for relaxing regulations around critical supplies for the sake of extra production during a crisis, but I'd be surprised if there weren't state/local regulations limiting them from buying unapproved ventilators. Elon might be able to make them, but I'm not sure NYC would be able to accept them.

      • I'd bet the Governor of New York may have a few things to say about legal red tape preventing the care someone needs to stay alive. He seems to be cutting through the bullshit just fine.

  • why can't they (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    just duplicate existing production lines of already-approved designs?

    • just duplicate existing production lines of already-approved designs?

      Musk worshipers can't jerk to that.

    • Re:why can't they (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @07:01PM (#59857782)

      An auto factory has a very different setup than a medical equipment manufacturer. I had done IT work for many different forms of Manufacturing including medical goods. For medical equipment, I have never seen a cleaner factory floor. They are even cleaner than food processing.
      Then you have only a sub-set of equipment to do the job and the manufacturing company may have to be creative to use the equipment at hand to make the products.

      • An auto factory has a very different setup than a medical equipment manufacturer. I had done IT work for many different forms of Manufacturing including medical goods. For medical equipment, I have never seen a cleaner factory floor. They are even cleaner than food processing.
        Then you have only a sub-set of equipment to do the job and the manufacturing company may have to be creative to use the equipment at hand to make the products.

        Depends on the medical equipment and it depends on the part of it. In addit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      Because that would take more time than if they could retrofit their current machines in to making a design within the constraints of that machine.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The production lines got sold to Communist China..

    • I doubt Ford, et. al. has exactly the same manufacturing equipment that MedTronics does, because they manufacture wildly different products. Some tools and machines cross over with just changing the tooling / molds, but there's probably whole parts of these devices that have zero intersection with automotive manufacturing.

  • What about current plans and designs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @07:19PM (#59857842)
    Companies that already produce ventilators have designs, blueprints, bill of materials, etc. Surely these can be given or licensed to other companies for use in setting up production lines. No need to start from scratch.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PA23 ( 1708056 )

      Trump invoked the war powers act of 1950, this gives him broad power to require companies to produce certain products, and control the supply chain for the materials required to make those products. I believe the act also allows him to force companies to provide product plans/manufacturing data to build said products.

      Only one problem, Trump only invoked the act he hasn't compelled any company to produce any products, in today's press briefing I believe he said something like "Companies are producing produc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Designs aren't the hard part. Building production lines is the hard part. There are very few products in the world where the design is in any way hard to reproduce. Reproducing any design fast and reliably is always the hard part. So, sure, by all means use existing designs, but that's just step one of many.

      • Exactly, factories aren't magical places where things poof into existence. They are designed to produce a specific thing. A multi ton car panel stamping machine will be pretty worthless for making ventilators. The same is true for the plastic molds used for the car dash and everything else on the production line.

        A whole new production line would need to be made from scratch. If Tesla needed to produce something automotive like then they could re-use equipment, but ventilators are not at all similar to a

    • Surely these can be given or licensed to other companies for use in setting up production lines.

      Setting up production lines involves ordering machines to do the job right according to the blueprint. In many cases if you need certain milled piece of equipment and you have a 3D printer, then you may as well start from scratch.

      Ventilators are not rocket surgery, nor brain science. In most cases unless you have the means to produce small medical equipment it's easier to start from scratch with your capabilities then start from a completed design and see how much of it you are incapable of making.

  • ... we're losing him! Set ludicrous mode.

  • Perhaps the more relevant question is whether not SpaceX or Tesla, or any aerospace or other manufacturer for that matter, actually have the capability to do this. Metal bending and working carbon fiber are very different animals from ventilators and masks. Whole different manufacturing processes, tooling, materials and supply chain, etc.
    • Didn't you see Apollo-13? You can build a ventilator out of duck tape and a can of pens.

      • Only if you have a spare Apollo CSM-109 command module in your back yard.

        Otherwise you also need a pool pump, a soldering iron, an old cassette stereo, a plastic coffee can, and a hair dryer.

    • Perhaps the more relevant question is whether not SpaceX or Tesla, or any aerospace or other manufacturer for that matter, actually have the capability to do this. Metal bending and working carbon fiber are very different animals from ventilators and masks. Whole different manufacturing processes, tooling, materials and supply chain, etc.

      There are also commonalities.

      There are circuit boards that need making and populating. They will either do those in house or use their existing contract manufacturers. In h

  • canisters (Score:4, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @09:01PM (#59858082)
    they'll need the covers from the flight manuals and some duct tape

  • I can see a re-design effort. That would serve cross purposes for both Elon brands. I'm guessing it would have fewer moving parts.

  • I hope these efforts can produce 100k additional ventilators within a month and a half because after two months we likely won’t need nearly as many.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not in the US with its very slow response (mostly due to some self-absorbed moron everybody can name). But there are countries in the rest of the world that are doing things that are effective to really flatten the curve, and these countries may have a use for those ventilators.

      • The flatter the curve the less of a need for ventilators. The reason South Korea is doing so much better than the US (patient 0 was about the same time to the day) is they started out with over 1000x the number of tests per capita, traced all contacts, and isolated people and kept testing right away. The US and U.K. policy of do nothing, maybe pretend it’s not a problem, till it blows up then wonder where where all the medical supplies are going to come from and how we are going to weather a total s

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Agreed, the need will be less dire. There still may be a need.

          As to the US/UK policy, what it most clearly shows is the disconnectedness and stupidity of the "leaders" and their cronies. An infectious disease with pandemic potential does not "blow over" and there is a very limited time-frame in which the exponential growth can be broken. This is not difficult to understand and it is not hard to find out, yet these two "leaders" made decisions that strongly indicate they understand absolutely nothing. Well,

          • "infectious disease with pandemic potential does not "blow over""

            Yes it does. Apparently you guys think that this is the first pandemic. The H1N1 pandemic infected 60-100 million Americans. We are still around, and over 60,000 Americans were infected with H1N1 even last year. Virus outbreaks happen. Sorry, but these are facts. Remember the swine flu? Between April 12, 2009, and April 10, 2010, the CDC estimates swine flu caused 60.8 million illnesses, 273,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in th

      • What "slow response"? He closed the borders to China while guys like you were still arguing if it was xenophobic or anti-gender or whatever you guys drone on about when real people make decisions.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You are deranged. I never argued against any of this. Closing borders, shutting down air-travel and social distancing are all obviously necessary measures that need to be implemented as early as possible in such a case. It is a fine line between being too slow and panicking people, but the idiot failed far too far on the side of not panicking people.

          Hence what the moron did was delay responses on all fronts because he had (and probably still has) no understanding of what was and is happening. This will cost

  • Initial intubation, medication while on a ventilator and the procedures related to the patient on the ventilator long term (including cleaning out mucus, preventing infections etc.) requires multiple shifts of highly trained staff. Even if they were to pump out thousands of dodgy and hastily approved ventilators, training staff would be needed. I suspect the case load with grow much faster than our ability to scale up the response. But by all means, try it.

  • Google results for a "DIY portable ventilator" --
    https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

    One prototype created by an MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering student group, one invented by a surgeon which seems to be waiting on venture funding, a deeply distressing video of a Chinese family that invented one to keep their child alive, another video of a someone who seems to have repurposed a CPAP device as a ventilator.

    Emergency waivers of regulations may lead to the creation of a cheap ventilator that can be deployed in a home-care environment -- something that may be very useful now.

  • The 737 Max won't fly this year anyway.
    Or maybe any year.

  • I can stop working on my ventilator project. That's a nice break from working on my involuntary vacation.

    I can relax a bit. SpaceX, Tesla, GM, and the rest of them are on the job. I have great faith in the ventilator with Serial Number 10,000. I'll probably get Serial Number 1. All SpaceX fans saw what happened to their last SN1. Seriously guys TEST THEM FOR WEEKS BEFORE SENDING THEM OUT, THEN WATCH ON CAMERAS AS MEDICAL PEOPLE WITH NO TRAINING ON YOUR SPECIFIC MACHINES TRY TO USE THEM ON SIMULATED PATIENTS

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