Photo: Editted by Autoevolution
Elon Musk has been getting all the spotlight in the electric luxury car business in the US for a while now. So much that other big investors are currently considering getting a piece of the cake themselves. The last to tease the market might be none other than Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group.
After all, the English billionaire is already rivaling Elon Musk only that so far it’s been rather something of the outer space industry. As we all know, Sir Richard Branson is the owner of the company that is currently working on the first commercial space service, one that aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.
Virgin Galactic has encountered some problems with the test flights, that culminated with last year’s tragic accident, when VSS Enterprise - a Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo experimental spaceflight test vehicle - suffered an in-flight breakup and crashed in the Mojave Desert, California. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and the pilot, Peter Siebold, was seriously injured. However, the company is going forward with its trials to prove the concept of commercial space flights is possible.
Anyway, this is just one of the investor’s interests, as Branson is also very interested in professional racing. After having failed to turn the Marussia Virgin Racing team into a successful F1 team, the 64-year old businessman has reiterated his choices and entered the Formula E game. He now owns the Virgin Racing Formula E team, having Jaime Alguersuari and Sam Bird driving the green monsters.
This week, Branson was in Miami, where his team competed in the all-electric race. Here is where Virgin Group’s founder said he is considering stepping into the electric car industry. After all isn’t the racing track the place where automakers test the new technologies future models will most likely integrate?
“We have teams of people on electric cars. So you never know - you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business. We will see what happens,” Branson told Bloomberg.
Question is, will the hypothetical Virgin electric car be a luxury sedan or will Branson create an affordable green car?
Virgin Galactic has encountered some problems with the test flights, that culminated with last year’s tragic accident, when VSS Enterprise - a Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo experimental spaceflight test vehicle - suffered an in-flight breakup and crashed in the Mojave Desert, California. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and the pilot, Peter Siebold, was seriously injured. However, the company is going forward with its trials to prove the concept of commercial space flights is possible.
Anyway, this is just one of the investor’s interests, as Branson is also very interested in professional racing. After having failed to turn the Marussia Virgin Racing team into a successful F1 team, the 64-year old businessman has reiterated his choices and entered the Formula E game. He now owns the Virgin Racing Formula E team, having Jaime Alguersuari and Sam Bird driving the green monsters.
This week, Branson was in Miami, where his team competed in the all-electric race. Here is where Virgin Group’s founder said he is considering stepping into the electric car industry. After all isn’t the racing track the place where automakers test the new technologies future models will most likely integrate?
“We have teams of people on electric cars. So you never know - you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business. We will see what happens,” Branson told Bloomberg.
Question is, will the hypothetical Virgin electric car be a luxury sedan or will Branson create an affordable green car?
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