At one of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings in Albany early this month, the governor was asked if he'd had any conversations with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about whether the company's Buffalo-based plant would reopen to produce ventilators.
At the time, Cuomo's top aide, Melissa DeRosa, noted that while Tesla was trying to ramp up in order to get things running as soon as possible, nothing had materialized yet. She also said that Tesla is talking about making only one part of the ventilator, not the entire device.
Cuomo noted that any new ventilator production will be held up by supply-chain issues.
"Nobody can make you a ventilator right now in two weeks," Cuomo said. "That's General Motors, that's Ford, that's Elon Musk. I don't care how big and how powerful, you can't make ventilators that fast because there are parts that have to come from other countries."
That production timeline means that any Tesla-made ventilators won't be finished in time for the apex of the outbreak in New York state, Cuomo said.
"Their timeframe, frankly, doesn't work for our immediate apex, because whether we're talking two days or 10 days, you're not going to make ventilators at that time," Cuomo said.