Tesla whistleblower breaks his silence | Hacker News Reader

Tesla whistleblower breaks his silence

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29 pointsbrisance25 comments

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.

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.)?

You created your account 34 minutes ago and have provided zero supporting links on your claims.

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.

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.

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.

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

You created your account about 10 minutes ago, chief. Not buying it.

I created a new account because my old one would get downvoted because my username was arguably offensive. I got tired of that.

I'm not sure what I'd be asking you to buy here. I'm neither siding with or against OP. I'm just making a point about levels of proof needed regarding actions by someone who is beloved by the public.

This isn't really controversial. Look how many allegations it took to sway people about Bill Cosby, for example.

> high rate of battery fires on the road

What exactly is that rate? Is it higher than other battery/ICE cars?

Russ Mitchell is an automotive reporter with the LA Times. His tweet says Tripp’s testimony matches his sources within the company about battery issues. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufszQCn2iueNVPWTkgQi39YNd4z...

Everything you need to know about Martin Tripp: https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1291854536924168195

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.

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.

Can someone fill me in on how this story started?

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).

https://www.scribd.com/document/471770054/TES-TRIPP-0028348-...

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.

> unfounded allegations about Tripp claiming about getting paid

This has already been substantiated on the court documents.

https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220154057895088133?...

>(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.

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.

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

This is 102 pages, what's the core argument?

It'd be better if you actually explained your position or made your point in addition to just commenting links.

It's summarized here: https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220153971668549637

I don't like to speculate. I would rather others form their own opinion.

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.

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.

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