Elon Musk: Tesla Employee Carried Out 'Extensive and Damaging Sabotage'
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out a company-wide email Sunday claiming an employee had conducted ‘extensive and damaging sabotage’ to the automaker’s manufacturing operations.
According to the email, which was published in full by CNBC, the employee admitted to making code changes to Tesla’s manufacturing operating system and exported sensitive data to unknown third parties. The employee’s motivation for doing this, Musk says, was that he did not receive the promotion he was hoping for.
“The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted to so far is pretty bad,” Musk said in the email. “His stated motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. In light of these actions, not promoting him was definitely the right move.”
“However, there may be considerably more to this situation than meets the eye, so the investigation will continue in depth this week,” he added. “We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations.”
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Musk then went on to say that there are “a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die,” including Wall Street short-sellers, oil and gas companies and big gas/diesel car company competitors, and that he’s not ruling out the possibility of the saboteur working hand-in-hand with one of these entities. He also took a swipe at those automakers who are suspected of gaming the emissions of their diesel vehicles, saying if they’re “willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they’re willing to cheat in other ways?”
Tesla this week set up a semi-permanent ‘tent’ factory to support production of the Model 3 – part of its ongoing effort to reach a production milestone of 5,000 Model 3s per week. Musk said on Twitter last night that the tent facility was required as Tesla needed “another general assembly line to reach 5k/week Model 3 production,” and that “a new building was impossible, so we built a giant tent in 2 weeks.”
In the email, Musk cautioned employees to be on the lookout for further sabotage as the automaker approaches its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s per week.
“Please be extremely vigilant, particularly over the next few weeks as we ramp up the production rate to 5k/week,” he said. “This is when outside forces have the strongest motivation to stop us.”
[Source: CNBC]
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Sam McEachern holds a diploma in journalism from St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, and has been covering the automotive industry for over 5 years. He conducts reviews and writes AutoGuide's news content. He's a die-hard motorsports fan with a passion for performance cars of all sorts.
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Elon Musk better explain to us little folks : 1) why gas powered automakers care what happens to Tesla ? - they are all developing electric vehicles which will provide 30 to 40 times more choices than Tesla's paltry inventory. And in case Musk missed it, four gas/oil companies in Europe are installing fast chargers in their gas stations, which can recharge CCS protocol vehicles twce as fast as Tesla can. And the reviews of the recently available electric I Pace Jaguar (the first direct Model X/S competitor) were decidedly positive against the inferior Tesla Model X (and S).
time to install some of those "vintage" WW2 spy posters about watching what you say and keep your eyes peeled for suspicious activity around the office, break rooms, and assembly lines. I can see it now, employees reporting on employees. "Careless talk can cost production!" Curious to whom the outside entity was that information was provided. I guess they need more green spaces inside to increase work place happiness or pipe more oxygen into the air handler.