Musk says Tesla is building ‘RNA microfactories’ for CureVac

July 2, 2020

(Reuters) – Tesla Inc <TSLA.O> is building “RNA microfactories” for coronavirus vaccine developer CureVac in Germany, the electric carmaker’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk, tweeted on Wednesday.

CureVac, an unlisted German company, has said it is developing transportable, automated mRNA production units that it calls printers. They will be designed to be shipped to remote locations, where they can churn out its vaccine candidate and other mRNA-based therapies depending on the recipe fed into the machine.

But for the immediate pandemic use – should its vaccine candidate win market approval – it has production sites with regulatory approval in Germany with a capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses.

It is also building a new stationary site that could increase its output tenfold to billions of doses.

Musk did not elaborate on his plans. Tesla and CureVac were not immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Subrat Patnaik and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)