
Tesla whistleblower breaks his silence - brisance
https://twitter.com/russ1mitchell/status/1291763545940533248
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threatofrain
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
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.)?

~~~
donttriggerme
I think you know that the issue here is there are too many folks who will
believe Musk nearly no matter what he says. It's going to take some really
strong evidence to slow or stop his freight train. Maybe that comes; maybe it
doesn't. But the power of true believers is strong and real. It helped save
Apple in the late 90s, and it will give Musk many, many second chances.

Edit: My comment was very, very neutral. And very, very factual. Shame on you
whoever downvoted me.

~~~
xedeon
I believe what's on the _official_ court documents that were made public.
Anything else is speculation, which is what is exactly what you're doing.

~~~
donttriggerme
I didn't speculate about anything. I just said that the public will require
overwhelming evidence of something bad to change its mind because of the cult
of personality around Musk. That's simply a fact.

~~~
stOneskull
change its mind about what? about him being like bill cosby? grow up.

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xedeon
Everything you need to know about Martin Tripp:
[https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1291854536924168195](https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1291854536924168195)

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ListenLinda
It appears the person in the video is Martin Tripp.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-
elon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-
tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp)

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.

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jwilber
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.

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holtkam2
Can someone fill me in on how this story started?

~~~
beepthroughbop
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).

~~~
xedeon
[https://www.scribd.com/document/471770054/TES-
TRIPP-0028348-...](https://www.scribd.com/document/471770054/TES-
TRIPP-0028348-pdf)

~~~
beepthroughbop
What am I supposed to take away? Some other former employee (who is broke, was
fired and is trying to get his job back at Tesla) claims the problems were not
that bad (Does he have expertise in batteries?). He makes a bunch of other
unfounded allegations about Tripp claiming about getting paid (Musk in his
deposition testified that there was no actual evidence for that allegation).
The entire testimony reads like incoherent rambling.

~~~
xedeon
> unfounded allegations about Tripp claiming about getting paid

This has already been substantiated on the court documents.

[https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220154057895088133?...](https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220154057895088133?s=20)

>(Musk in his deposition testified that there was no actual evidence for that
allegation).

Do you have a link for this claim? I'm curious to read it.

~~~
beepthroughbop
Page 83 and 84 of the Musk deposition for Lopez.

Musk says that his private security told him that Tripp's colleague (who was
living in his car begging for his job back) told him about a payment but the
private security testified their investigation found no evidence. Musk himself
doesn't explicitly testify that there was no evidence in that passage. I
confused that section with his testimony about the lack of evidence linking
Tripp to shortsellers on page 96.

So the entire claim about payment rests on the testimony of a QA technician
who got fired for cause from Tesla, was living in his car and begging Tesla
for his job back, a claim that Musk's own private investigator testified they
could find no evidence for.

~~~
xedeon
A link to your claims would be great. Otherwise, it's hard to take it
seriously.

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xiphias2
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.

