Tesla to make 'molecule printers' for COVID-19 vaccine developer CureVac

Tesla is building mobile "molecule printers" to help make the potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by CureVac in Germany, the electric-car maker's chief executive, Elon Musk, tweeted on Wednesday.

CureVac, an unlisted German company, has said it is developing portable, automated mRNA production units that it calls printers and which Musk described as "RNA microfactories."

They are being designed to be shipped to remote locations, where they can churn out CureVac's 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 — CureVac has production sites with regulatory approval in Germany with a capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses. CureVac is also building a new stationary site that could increase its output tenfold to billions of doses.