
Former Tesla employee claims he is a whistleblower - greedo
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-whistleblower-20180621-story.html
======
shashanoid
So, Tesla brought on a white collar defense specialist (some say the best in
the country) to file charges against a whistleblower - excuse me - a
disgruntled employee?

I am beginning to think Feds are onto it. Tesla isn't fighting this blue
collar worker, they expect a fight with the Feds and SEC.

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Fricken
Musk has hired a former Enron prosecuter to help him crush this little man:

[https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/06/20/tesla-brings-
on-f...](https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/06/20/tesla-brings-on-former-
enron-prosecutor-to-go-after-ex-employee-accused-of-
hacking/?slreturn=20180521084311)

~~~
erikb
The funny thing is that Musk is literally destroying his public image with
this. I mean, who will believe his nice nerd image if he's standing with blood
stained face laughing about the crippled dead body of this ex employee of his.
Not many better ways of public image suicide out there.

~~~
telchar
Oh come off it. If he's indeed a saboteur he will garner very little pity from
losing a lawsuit. Since when do we support people who allegedly use industrial
sabotage against the very companies pushing the boundaries of reducing
pollution and greenhouse gas emissions? Your overblown imagery is ridiculous.

~~~
Fricken
When Musk went public with delusional claims about what Autopilot's HW2 would
be capable of, the director of Autopilot at the time, Sterling Anderson, made
the principled decision to resign. Sterling later teamed up with Chris Urmson
and Drew Bagnell to co-founded their autonomous driving startup, Aurora
innovation. When the fledgling startup was only 3 weeks old Musk levied a
meritless lawsuit against Aurora, accusing them of using trade secrets stolen
from Tesla. The irony of this is that there was nothing worth stealing from
autopilot. It was a critical time for Aurora, and the lawsuit was costing them
$200k/month, so Aurora settled out of court, paying Tesla's legal fees and
agreeing to monthly audits (which Tesla never followed up on, since the
lawsuit was bullshit anyhow).

My opinion of Musk really went south after that. I'm not giving him the
benefit of the doubt on anything, anymore.

Fortunately Aurora managed to escape that near death experience and has an
autonomous driving dream team together, solid funding, and has partnerships
with 2 of the top 3 biggest automakers in the world.

Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership and
have the potential to dramatically reduce the impact our transportation system
has on the environment, and that's what Musk was out to destroy.

~~~
zip1234
If you were the Tesla CEO and your director of Autopilot quits to start a
company doing the exact same thing, would you be OK with that? I wouldn't.

~~~
Fricken
If I was the CEO of Tesla Sterling wouldn't have quit, because my strategy for
developing autonomy would have been grounded in reality.

My strategy for mass producing the Model 3 also would have been grounded in
reality. And I certainly wouldn't have spent $2.6 billion buying a failing
solar installation company with $2.9 billion in debt.

The last few years of Musk's reign over Tesla have been marked by colossal
strategic errors made unilaterally in stubborn defiance of conventional wisdom
and against the better advice of the experts and specialists he's surrounded
by. I don't know why you guys keep defending him, he's incompetent. He has an
established track record of paranoia, delusions, cronyism, lies, threats and
petty vengeance. For all his claims of Tesla's many enemies, the only legit
threat to Tesla's future success is Musk himself. Big boy car companies don't
operate this way, and for very good reasons. _Very good reasons_.

It would be a lot easier to root for Tesla the company if it could be
separated from Elon Musk the personality cult.

------
JakeWesorick
Were his actions in line with being a whistleblower? Was what he release
evidence of the punctured batteries? I thought he was making direct code
changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System.

~~~
Someone1234
That's what Tesla claimed. Tesla also said he was leaking multi-gigabytes of
information to "sources unknown," and implied it was the oil/gas/competitors.
Turns out it was Business Insider and other news media.

~~~
cjhopman
> Turns out it was Business Insider and other news media.

And that they knew that when making the "sources unknown" claim.

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zzzeek
Musk sounds like an unhinged conspiracy theorist and everything I hear about
this company leads me to continue to wish for traditional automakers to take
over the great innovations he's pushed forward with mass produced, fully
electric and highly automated cars, and bring it up to scale in a safe and
reasonable way.

~~~
jstanley
I'd like to see someone selling a fully electric car that _isn 't_ highly
automated.

I don't want cruise control, lane following, stability control, automatic
braking, automatic collision avoidance, anti-lock brakes, etc.

I just want a brake pedal connected directly to the brakes, and a throttle
pedal connected directly to an ESC, and a motor connected directly to the
wheels.

I don't want a computer controlling everything from behind the scenes, and I
certainly don't want it "cloud-connected" or otherwise reporting to the
mothership.

Is that too much to ask? It should be much cheaper and easier to make than
other electric cars, but nobody is doing it.

~~~
Someone1234
You're more or less describing a golf cart.

The reason computer controlled is used is because in order for electric
vehicles to be efficient they need a special transmission, nobody has designed
a fully mechanical transmission that compares to computer controlled (not
least of all because mechanical transmissions are reactive, not proactive,
meaning you're always less efficient than you could be, because that very
inefficiency is what drives the transmission to shift).

You'd also lose regenerative braking which is a major "win" for electric
vehicles.

~~~
mikestew
_in order for electric vehicles to be efficient they need a special
transmission_

Electric cars don't have transmissions. At least the Leaf and Teslas don't,
that I can say with certainty.

~~~
notlob
Both of your examples have transmissions, they are however a single gearing
ratio (“reduction gear”). EV conversions also frequently use a multi-gear
transmission, as did the original Tesla Roadster IIRC.

~~~
mikestew
Figured someone would be along shortly to point this out. Here ya go:
"electric cars do not have the multi-ratio selectable transmissions that are
in ICE cars." I seriously doubt anyone was confused by my succinct version,
though.

------
thisisit
I really looking forward to the actual trial and evidence provided by Tesla.
This can actually make or break Musk and maybe Tesla's image. They have
insinuated in the mail that this might be an act of sabotage by oil/gas
companies and/or short sellers. If Musk/Tesla can't prove those allegations
they will be labelled as someone who cries wolf at the first sign of trouble.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
I think I'm just gonna sit back on this story. Tesla has proved itself to be
untrustworthy repeatedly but Mr. Tripp seems like he's doing whatever it takes
to avoid going to prison. The truth is the first casualty here.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
One does not end up in prison from a lawsuit. Tesla cited the criminal codes
in question to try to make that happen, but only the government can bring
criminal cases, and criminal cases aren’t brought on unproven allegations in a
civil lawsuit. If they were serious about putting him in prison, Tesla would
have discussed referrals to law enforcement in their communications and we’d
likely be hearing from district attorneys by now, given the attention on the
case.

Martin Tripp ending up in prison is extraordinarily unlikely, even if Tesla is
100% correct. That you even considered the possibility means that Tesla’s
strategy of sprinkling the word “illegal” throughout the complaint to paint a
criminal picture worked.

~~~
drivingmenuts
I think it's more likely that Musk wants to know who received the information
and will plan accordingly from there. Additionally, it will scare others to
keep them from releasing information.

------
gcb0
history time for ppl who think this is rare:

VW plant, making their top of the line model. solder arm robots have two air
input hoses. one wide, high pressure and slow response that is the "power".
another nibler but fast response that is the actuator and only moves a small
part that open/close the power valve.

the hoses were switched in one chassis line robot. causing the strong power
line to simply hold the actuator always open. the small line was going to the
" power" input, effectively controlling the soldering arm movement with the
low power normally used only for the control valve.

it did solder the chassis. was it up to spec? hardly. did all the chasis went
down the line without more than a visual inspection? yep.

~~~
lovich
Were the two hoses keyed so that they couldn't be switched? If not, that could
be sabotage but it could just as easily be human error.

If you are relying on humans catching every mistake you are going to have
mistakes happen. You need to make it so that it requires active effort to fuck
up if you want avoid issues

~~~
gcb0
from what I recall in the history (heard from the husband of a college friend,
he was the person that fixed the thing) the person who did the mixup went to a
lot of trouble to fit the hoses in the wrong way.

------
gcb0
tesla is going to crash and burn all because musk is more worried about his
ego above quality, employees, and even consumers.

he could use a vacation or something.

------
0xbxd
LA Times is not available in Europe. Does anyone know a way of how to access
the article?

edit:// Seems to be available in Google Cache at (
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6Zh46Sr...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6Zh46Sr5ZEQJ:www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-
fi-hy-tesla-
whistleblower-20180621-story.html+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=firefox-b)
).

As suspected, more of a press release than anything else. Just because the
name "Tesla" is in it this gets upvoted?

edit2:// This is the original article which has much more detail and is
overall better:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2018/06/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2018/06/20/tesla-sues-former-employee-as-elon-musk-signals-hunt-for-
saboteurs/?utm_term=.6ec64f69a27b)

~~~
whatyoucantsay
Talk to your representatives and let them know the pain the vague and
overreaching GDPR causes you. Perhaps, in time, law makers will undo some of
the harm they've caused.

Until then, invest in a VPN that lets you appear to be from elsewhere.

~~~
zzzeek
Why not talk to the LA Times and encourage them to be GPDR compliant? For
everyone, not just EU citizens.

~~~
whatyoucantsay
Because the GDPR requirements are vague, overreaching, at odds with best
practise and not yet even implemented by the misguided legislature that wrote
it.

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univalent
What a mess. Even if Musk decided to go the route of suing this person why did
he publicize it himself? What is to be gained for him in the court of public
opinion?

~~~
koreyb
Same as Apple; as a warning to other employees.

------
rich-w-big-ego

      Martin Tripp ... spoke out after seeing "some really scary things" ... including dangerously punctured batteries installed in cars
    

Yeah, right. How, exactly, does a batter get "dangerously punctured" at any
point in the manufacturing process?

~~~
Fricken
>In February, a misprogrammed robot that handles battery modules repeatedly
punctured through the plastic housing (called a clamshell) and into some
battery cells, the employee said, adding that instead of scrapping all the
modules, some were fixed with adhesive and put back on the manufacturing line.
According to internal documents Business Insider reviewed, this foible
affected more than 1,000 pieces.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-scrap-waste-
hig...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-scrap-waste-high-
gigafactory-2018-5)

~~~
ebikelaw
You can kinda make that sound bad, and it might have been bad, but reworking
pieces is standard practice in many industries. "Fixed with adhesive" sounds
like a hack but there are many wonderful adhesives.

~~~
mrguyorama
A punctured lithium cell is not a minor defect

~~~
rasz
Tesla doesnt use plastic Lithium cells, they use standard 18650 and 2170 metal
ones.

>plastic housing (called a clamshell)

is an external insulating case for the whole battery pack, there is metal case
inside it, and another one on top of it.

~~~
mrguyorama
>punctured through the plastic housing (called a clamshell) _and into some
battery cells_

Emphasis mine. I interpreted that as also popping some of the individual
cells. If you replaced the individual cells that were breached you could
probably be okay, but at the same time, look at how minor the defect was that
was causing Samsung phones to catch fire

~~~
rasz
Cellphone batteries are soft plastic pouches.

