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Tesla whistleblower breaks his silence

29 points| brisance | 5 years ago |twitter.com

25 comments

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threatofrain|5 years ago

Is there any verification to his core claims? His videos meander so much, his claims are vague, and the statement about firing his attorneys is concerning.

beepthroughbop|5 years ago

The specificity of the claims, high rate of battery fires on the road, general pattern of behavior at Tesla with respect to build quality and disregard for safety. Not enough to convict anyone but enough to convince me that it is more probable than not. It should also be enough to convince anyone that there is a serious possibility that it's true.

What verification would have satisfied you for the fraud at Wirecard (or Enron, etc.)?

ListenLinda|5 years ago

It appears the person in the video is Martin Tripp.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...

Martin Tripp, a slight man of 40 who’d spent his career in a series of low-level manufacturing jobs before finding his way to the assembly line at the Gigafactory. Tripp later claimed to be an idealist trying to get Tesla to tighten its operations; Musk saw him as a dangerous foe who engaged in “extensive and damaging sabotage,” as he wrote in a staff memo.

jwilber|5 years ago

That video was very... weird. Not much to take away from a man rambling for 11 minutes.

I’m not saying I do/don’t believe his claims, I just don’t know what they are to begin with.

holtkam2|5 years ago

Can someone fill me in on how this story started?

beepthroughbop|5 years ago

Tesla had (has?) many defects in their batteries and they were putting dangerous units into production cars when they should have been thrown away. They were also hiding the defects in the financial accounting by marking them as test units instead of scrap.

Tripp tried to bring the issue to management's attention. Musk and management ignored him. Tripp then went to the press. Musk then fired him, put him under 24/7 surveillance, tapped his cell phone using a stinger, and seemingly[1] ordered someone to "SWAT" him by calling in a fake threat that Tripp was armed and coming to Tesla to "shoot up the place". Tripp is now suing.

[1] Hard to believe that it wasn't done a Musk's direction given that similar things have happened to other whisteblowers (child services was called on another [I believe she is now suing], Musk personally called the boss of at least one other, Musk tried to get another external whistleblower arrested by falsely claiming vehicular assault [and also tried to get him expelled], that person is now suing).

brisance|5 years ago

Martin Tripp was a Tesla employee who was fired for whistleblowing. He saw that Tesla was taking short cuts to increase production at the expense of safety and leaked the info to the press. In retaliation, he had his phone and computer hacked. They even SWATted him and claimed he was going to shoot people at the factory despite having: 1) private investigators having him under surveillance even after office hours 2) knowing his location at all times through his hacked phone.

xiphias2|5 years ago

The stats of Tesla deaths per million miles is better than moat cars, so until there's a proof that those statistics are biased, I side with Tesla.

This is very different from the diesel emissions lie that is killing millions of people silently every year.