Green Cars: Richard Branson Ready To Tangle With Elon Musk?

(RTTNews) - Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group which includes popular music labels, wireless services, airlines and private spaceflight ventures, has hinted about entering the electric car business and may even compete against Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA).

The billionaire indicated during an interview to Bloomberg that Virgin might jump into electric car business as it already has engineers who are working on high-speed electric cars for Formula E.

"We have teams of people working on electric cars," Branson said to Bloomberg TV. "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 was speaking from Miami, where his Virgin Racing team was competing in the Formula E race. Formula E is a class of auto racing for electrically powered cars. The race is sanctioned by the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), which is also the association behind Formula One.

Branson's private space-travel company Virgin Galactic already competes with Elon Musk's SpaceX, with ambitions to provide spaceflights to space tourists.

Meanwhile, the recent interest of big companies has turned to self-driven electric cars. Apple has been reportedly working on self-driving electric car that could be launched by 2020.