Exclusive: Ferrari and Fiat look at helping Italy make ventilators in coronavirus crisis

www.reuters.com ^ | 03/19/2020 | Elvira Pollina, Giulio Piovaccari

[Red Badger]

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian carmakers Ferrari and Fiat Chrysler are in talks with the nation’s biggest ventilator manufacturer to help to boost production of the life-saving machines that are urgently needed in the coronavirus crisis, company officials said on Thursday.

Italy is at the epicenter of the pandemic and its government has embarked on a big expansion of the number of intensive care beds, many of which will require ventilators to keep patients alive by taking over breathing functions.

Siare Engineering in northern Italy, where deaths are nearing 3,000 and climbing sharply, is in talks with Fiat Chrysler (FCA), Ferrari and Italian parts maker Marelli to make some parts, source others and to possibly help with the assembly of ventilators.

Gianluca Preziosa, Siare’s chief executive, said the two industries share some expertise, with both the ventilator business and automakers relying heavily on electronics as well as pneumatics.

[Red Badger]

Ford and GM as well.

How is that possible?

Isn't there a materials chain and learning curve?

Or are ventilators easy to make?.....................

[The Pack Knight]

I want my ventilator with a Rosso Scuderia paint job, please.

[musicman]

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[waredbird]

I keep searching for the answer to the question “has anyone in the US died for lack of having access to a ventilator “? Seriously want to know. If not there hasn’t been a shortage YET. I don’t know why PDJT doesn’t state that if there hasn’t been.

[Spktyr]

Even before the current crisis, yes, people have died from lack of a ventilator. It’s one of the pieces of equipment that we really didn’t have enough of before in many hospitals, and the latest projections make that look even worse.

Remember, ventilators aren’t just used for COVID-19 treatment - they are used for regular pneumonia cases, in trauma cases, smoke (or worse, fire) inhalation and many other scenarios that play out in regular life.

[Sooth2222]

I’d choose a Toyota ventilator over one made by Fiat.

[jz638]

The executives who are pitching these ideas are also not the people who are going to be held responsible for figuring out how to do it.

CNC machines can be reprogrammed quickly, robots can be reprogrammed and assemblers can make whatever they’re trained to make... but it would represent a small portion of assembly lines.

Hard tooling can’t be rejiggered quickly, materials and component parts would have to be supplied (guess where a lot of those component parts come from), and for a medical device, there are probably additional cleanliness and material considerations. That “new car smell” is actually the smell of chemicals drying. Chemicals you probably don’t want concentrated and shoved into the lungs of very sick people.

Still, the PR gain from an offer to help is worth the trouble it may cause by pushing the engineers to scramble and figure out how to cash the checks their board members are writing.