Virgin boss teases a Tesla challenger

Is the next big battle in automotive going to be Musk vs Branson? Outspoken billionaire Richard Branson isn't exactly coy when it comes to teasing what he's working on, and it seems following Elon Musk into electric cars might be Virgin's next frontier. For the moment, Virgin's EV schemes center on the Virgin Racing team taking part in Formula E, the all-electric branch of Formula 1, but according to Branson that might not always be the case.

"We have teams of people working on electric cars," Branson pointed out to Bloomberg Business this week, speaking on the sidelines at the latest Formula E meet in Miami and presumably referring for the most part to the powerful racing cars.

Still, Branson clearly couldn't resist hinting at more. "So you never know," he continued, "you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business."

It wouldn't be the first time Branson and Musk's interests have overlapped. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are both investing heavily in private, commercial spaceflight, the costs involved in which make electric car technology look relatively affordable.

Nonetheless, it's still a challenging space to break into, as startups like Fisker discovered. The Fisker Karma combined gas, electric, and solar into one slinky sedan, but the company ended up in bankruptcy and being sold off to help repay government financing.

Meanwhile both Apple and Google are believed to have their own plans to bring cars to market, with EVs in the pipeline for each firm (despite skepticism from the mainstays of the automotive segment).

Apple's project is believed to include more than a hundred people working on an advanced electric car, while Google has already demonstrated its latest self-driving "pod" cars that, if all goes to plan, will begin public trials in the coming months.

SOURCE Bloomberg Business