{"id":128487,"date":"2018-08-06T09:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T13:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=128487"},"modified":"2018-08-06T09:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T13:22:55","slug":"former-worker-countersues-tesla-over-sabotage-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2018\/08\/former-worker-countersues-tesla-over-sabotage-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Worker Countersues Tesla Over Sabotage Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former employee Martin Tripp claims he was fired after trying to report problems at Tesla's Gigafactory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A former employee at the Gigafactory battery plant has sued Tesla after it claimed he committed sabotage and stole intellectual property.<\/p>\n

Martin Tripp was fired by the battery-carmaker in June and subsequently sued by Tesla for allegedly sabotaging the company\u2019s manufacturing system and also stealing its intellectual property. In turn, Tripp has filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, while also filing a lawsuit against Tesla.<\/p>\n

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News Now!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the lawsuit, the former employee said the carmaker took action after he \u201craised his concerns about the seemingly exorbitant amounts of scrap\u201d being produced at the Gigafactory, though \u201cno action was taken.\u201d Tripp even sent an email to Tesla CEO on May 16, 2018 expressing his concerns and backing them up with \u201cgraphical charts.\u201d<\/p>\n

That led to a disagreement with his supervisors, Tripp alleges in his suit, as they wanted to \u201cclean up\u201d the piles of waste so they wouldn\u2019t be observed during a visit to the plant by CEO Musk. Tripp was subsequently reassigned to a different operation at the Gigafactory but there, he claims, he witnessed additional problems that led to battery packs being dented and, in some cases punctured resulting in, 1,173 modules having to be replaced.<\/p>\n

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk warns there could be other "bad apples" intent on sabotage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tesla ultimately fired Tripp after he says he made additional efforts to get the problems at the Gigafactory dealt. Soon after, the company claimed that the former employee altered software that could cause damage to its manufacturing system. It also accused Tripp of copying secret files and sending them to persons outside the company. It was left unclear in the federal lawsuit Tesla filed in June whether Tripp had supplied information to news media, to competitors or both.<\/p>\n

(Tesla Q2 losses double, but as production soars, profits promised in Q3. <\/em>Click Here<\/a>\u00a0for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Curiously, while Tesla has filed suit in federal district court in Nevada, it has not attempted to bring criminal charges against Tripp, even though there are specific laws relating to both sabotage and data theft under which the one-time employee could face potential charges.<\/p>\n

The only time the authorities so far appear to have become involved relates to a claim made by a female worker at the Gigafactory that she received a call alleging Tripp had threatened to \u201cshoot the place up.\u201d Tripp was interviewed by the Storey County Sheriff\u2019s office which determined there was \u201cno credible threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems Tripp claims to have observed occurred during the \u201cMarch to 2,500,\u201d the push Tesla made early this year to start rolling out 2,500 of its Model 3 battery sedans each week. Production of the critical model began in July 2017 but serious problems at both the Gigafactory and Tesla\u2019s Fremont, California assembly plant severely limited output. Production barely topped 2,000 by the end of March 2018 before reaching 5,000 by the last week of June. During a second-quarter earnings call last week, Musk claimed Tesla is now up to around 7,000 Model 3s weekly, with a goal of pushing that to 10,000.<\/p>\n

(Tesla wants to hire designers – for video games. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The question raised by Tripp is whether Tesla has tolerated quality problems to boost Model 3 production.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just before Model 3 production was launched, Musk said he expected the company would face \u201cmanufacturing hell.\u201d But it has denied the allegations about the battery plant, issuing a statement asserting that, \u201cTripp is either not telling the truth or he simply has no idea what he is talking about.”<\/p>\n

CEO Musk has separately warned that there could be other \u201cbad apples\u201d who want to sabotage Tesla\u2019s drive to increase production though, so far, no one else has been fired or sued.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that Tesla reported another loss, news of the jump in production and a likely third-quarter profit sent the company\u2019s stock surging last week, racing as high as $353 a share before settling back slightly.<\/p>\n

But there are still a large number of short-sellers, as well as analysts who continue to rate TSLA shares a \u201csell.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Tesla demands refunds from suppliers to help it claw back into black.\u00a0<\/em>Click Here<\/a>\u00a0for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the concerns frequently raised is whether Tesla can, indeed, maintain the current production pace. Equally concerning is whether the automaker has been willing to risk quality problems to reach current production levels. Analysts have warned that as it reaches out to a more mainstream audience, quality issues could cause Tesla serious problems.<\/p>\n

The SEC has not stated a timetable for responding to Tripp\u2019s whistleblower account.<\/p>\n

Tripp\u2019s case is just one of several employee issues Tesla is facing. It has been sued for discrimination. It is also battling with the National Labor Relations Board over a 2016 mass firing of nearly 1,000 Fremont plant workers. The carmaker alleged that their work wasn\u2019t up to par though the NLRB has so far backed counterclaims that the workers were dismissed because they supported a drive to bring a labor union into Fremont.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former employee at the Gigafactory battery plant has sued Tesla after it claimed he committed sabotage and stole intellectual property. Martin Tripp alleges Tesla is trying to cover up quality problems. TheDetroitBureau.com sorts through the details of the two lawsuits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5,10,12,9],"tags":[],"make":[110],"post-state":[],"category_old":[150,151,123,173,319,142,155,299,169,132,125,122,139,291,207],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128487"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=128487"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=128487"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=128487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}