how long will the transition take joining me now on the cnbc news line is former gm vice chairman bob lutz spent time in the boardrooms of chrysler, ford and bmw. he's a cnbc contributor and lutz communication ceo. good morning to you. you have quite a history with the automakers unless i'm mistaken, i don't believe you worked at one that tried to retro fit a manufacturing facility to make medical equipment. i guess my first question upon hearing this is, can it be done? and how would it actually be done >> well, if the medical equipment were required in the same quantity as automobiles and were as complicated to make, then it would take a long time because you'd have to retool everything but what we're talking about here is by automotive standards relatively low manufacturing we're talking neshlly maybe a couple hundred units a day not 14,000, 15,000 a day like the big automakers produce and all these automakers have conventional shops where they make their own tooling and they make prototype parts, which are kind of divorced from the big manufacturing plants those prototype shops are man

if you avoided everything auto, and bob lutz knows auto better than anyone, it's all relative housingas a chance the problem with auto is that you see mary barra, how many ventilators does she have? don't look at the ford common stock, that's not fair >> they're going to make 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days 50,000 >> let's count them. >> 30,000 a month as needed. that's in conjunction with ge's health care unit >> ge, how are they doing? how is ge doing? >> there's some challenges one would expect aircraft listen, i would love to hear from mr. culp. when did we sit down with him? not that long ago. yet the world has changed. >> i like what they're doing i do think that boeing, a lot of good things behind the scenes happened with boeing had a big move airlines, we're hearing about the treasury secretary getting involved buying stakes a lot of these things we forget about. one thing you need when you have airplanes is passengers. >> yeah. did you see the numbers from yesterday? 154,000 total passengers courtesy of phil lebeau and megan reider >> there was a last flight out of

. >>> joining us right now to talk more about all of this is bob lutz the former vice chairman with general motors he's now a cnbc contributor. great to have you with us. >> good to be here thank you. >> you know, we were just talking to russell wilson. he said he's never seen anything like this in his 31 years in terms of the shutdown with sports you've got a little more experience than that how would you compare this to things or is this unique >> well, it's fairly unique, but don't forget that during world war ii the automobile industry was shut down from 1941 through 1945 and while the business may be off 20 to 25% right now, there is -- that still leaves the other 75%. i've been talking to former colleagues at general motors and they say, well, it's time to cut fixed costs, reduce spending, prevent cash outflow as much as possible, probably put some future products on hold, but as we pointed out, some of the country is doing business okay a lot of the country is not as affected but dealers are off they account for the global business like china which is a huge factor has apparently pas