Musk then ranted about shutdown orders, calling them fascist and undemocratic. After the California county where the factory is located initially told Tesla it couldn’t reopen, the company sued and the CEO threatened to relocate operations to other states. Production restarted before the county gave the go-ahead and the suit was later dropped.
Tesla emerged from the shutdown on a tear from a stock-market perspective, displacing Toyota Motor Corp. in July to become the world’s most valuable automaker. While the company reported record quarterly vehicle deliveries last month, it’s acknowledged it will be difficult to reach its target to hand over 500,000 cars to customers this year. Toyota and Volkswagen AG by comparison sell more than 10 million vehicles annually.
Musk wrote that the rapid antigen tests he’d taken were from “BD,” likely referring to Becton Dickinson and Co. The company received emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July.
The regulator said then that the test is designed to detect bits of the virus’s nucleocapsid antigens -- the proteins that surround the virus’s genetic material -- in nasal swabs from people who are suspected to have Covid-19 within the first five days of the onset of symptoms.
Positive results do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses, the agency said. Negative results should be considered “presumptive,” do not rule out the possibility of a coronavirus infection and “should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or patient management decisions.”
Although no diagnostic test is perfect, PCR tests are considered the gold standard in terms of accuracy. They look for tiny bits of the virus’s nucleic acids in a person’s sample. But they also have drawbacks. They’re highly technical, expensive and typically take many hours or days for someone to receive results.
Musk wrote that he would receive his in about 24 hours.
--With assistance from Charlie Zhu, Chunying Zhang and Melissa Cheok.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.