Richard Branson Might Be Building A Tesla Rival With Virgin

It looks like Richard Branson wants to take on Elon Musk in more than just space flight. Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Musk’s SpaceX are both working to bring space flight to the masses, and now Virgin Racing’s electric car exploits in Formula E could spawn a road-going rival for Tesla.

Bloomberg tracked down the billionaire at the Formula E round in Miami, to ask what he’s getting out of running a team in the electric car championship. “We have teams of people working 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.”

It’s fair to say Branson’s being quite vague on how serious Virgin is about putting a car on the road, or how far along the project is, but with ‘teams of people’ involved, it’d be surprising not to see something come of this project. With Formula E relaxing its rules next year to allow more innovation by teams, the lessons learned on race day could have viable results for a road car.