Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, has at least two things in common with the President of the United States, Donald Trump: an impetuous and frantic use of Twitter, and contradictory positions on the pandemic linked to the coronavirus. He, who has worked tirelessly in recent weeks to minimize the seriousness of the situation, now plans to manufacture respirators in his factories.
An announcement after one of his Twitter followers caught him online on Wednesday, March 18.
@elonmusk @fawadchaudhry Please repurpose your factory to make ventilators which are needed ASAP. I am a Tesla owne… https://t.co/vB6MCjVvty
“Use your factories to make respirators that are urgently needed. I am the owner of a Tesla and I love this company. Stop being silly about (this situation). It’s a major disaster. "
Catching the ball, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told the manufacturer on Thursday that he was " Buyer " : "The city will need several hundred devices in the coming weeks", said the elected official.
Just this week, on Twitter, Musk also spoke about using chloroquine to treat people with coronavirus, saying he had been treated with the antimalarial in the past. Even if this remedy is studied by several teams of researchers, it is not unanimous.
Tesla, one of the companies most affected on the stock market
The zeal of the American billionaire contrasts with the lightness with which he described the situation until recently. "The panic caused by the coronavirus is stupid", he claimed on March 6. “The virality of the Covid-19 is exaggerated (…). The death rate too ”, he said two days later. He then claimed that the children were "Essentially immune" face the virus.
For the Guardian, if Tesla's boss has been so light on the pandemic, it is above all because he wanted to be able to keep his production site in Fremont, in northern California, open as long as possible. Thursday, he finally had to resolve to close it from March 23, the company said, "Despite all the health precautions that have been taken".
As the pandemic continues to spread, Tesla is one of the most affected companies on the stock market. A month after reaching its highest historic level, at more than 917 dollars (850 euros), on February 19, the automaker's stock lost more than half of its value.
The only good news for Elon Musk: due to the spread of the virus in the United States, the trial which was to open on Monday March 23, and during which he was to answer before shareholders dissatisfied with the conditions of the buyout of the company SolarCity in 2016 (for $ 2.6 billion) has been postponed, we learned on Friday.
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