Tesla sues former employee accused of stealing ‘gigabytes’ of data

Defendant calls himself a ‘whistle-blower’
and denies hacking claims

One-Minute Read

A lawsuit filed yesterday in Las Vegas
alleges that Martin Tripp, a former engineer at Tesla’s
Nevada-based Gigafactory, leaked confidential information to third
parties that caused “significant and continuing damages” to the
electric car company.

The information includes “dozens of confidential
photographs and a video of Tesla’s manufacturing systems”,
according to the company’s lawyers. 

The lawsuit also claims that Tripp created his own
“hacking software” and uploaded it to three computers inside Tesla,
in a bid to continuing leaking data following his sacking last
week.

Tripp told The Washington Post that he did not tamper with
Tesla’s internal computers and insists he is a “whistle-blower” who
witnessed “some really scary things”. 

The engineer, who had been working for Tesla since
October, claims he saw “punctured batteries” fitted in “hundreds”
of Model 3 electric cars. 

Tesla refutes the claim and says it does not export cars
with safety concerns, the newspaper reports.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the lawsuit comes “days”
after Tesla chief executive Elon Musk issued a company-wide email
accusing an employee of “damaging sabotage” and announced an
investigation into the matter.

Musk hinted on Twitter that there are more individuals
involved in the case, but insisted that “the actions of a few bad
apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals”.

“With 40,000 people, the worst 1 in 1000 will have issues.
That’s still ~40 people”, he said.

Nevertheless, the BBC says Tesla is seeking $1m (£760,000) in damages in
its lawsuit against Tripp.