Oh dear, Elon Musk is not having the best time right now.

Neither is the supposedly “horrible human being” who Musk is filing a lawsuit against, for allegedly carrying out sabotage at Tesla.

In the midst of a media meltdown, the Tesla CEO has claimed that he had caught Martin Tripp, one of his employees, conducting “damaging sabotage to our operations”.

Tripp was allegedly making “direct code changes” to Tesla’s manufacturing system, and sending “large amounts of highly sensitive data to unknown third parties”, reports Vanity Fair:

On Wednesday [June 20], Tesla filed a lawsuit against former process engineer Martin Tripp, alleging that Tripp had illegally exported gigabytes of confidential data, including “dozens of confidential photographs and a video of Tesla’s manufacturing systems,” and made false statements about Tesla to the media; in short, a straightforward case of an employee undermining his boss.

Sounds like straightforward saboteur work to me.

Except Tripp – who used to worship Musk – is adamant that it’s not what it looks like.

Instead, he claims that he’s merely a whistleblower, having witnessed some pretty dodgy things going down at Tesla:

Before he started at the company in October, Tripp [pictured below] idolised Tesla. “I was always drooling about the Teslas and wanting to buy one,” he told the Post, saying he saw the company as a “golden opportunity.” “I was living the mission: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Once he started at the company, however, his views changed.

Tripp confirmed to the Post that he leaked information to Business Insider for a story earlier this month about waste at Tesla — according to internal documents, as much as 40 percent of the raw materials that go into Tesla’s driving units and batteries are reworked or scrapped before being assembled into Model 3 vehicles.

The result is that, for every functioning Tesla part, thousands of pieces of “non-conforming material” are also created. Per internal estimates reviewed by Business Insider, Tesla has spent over R2 billion on scrap material so far this year.

In other words, these Model 3 vehicles have some suspicious-looking junk in the trunk.

This didn’t fly with Tripp, who felt uncomfortable about Tesla’s less-than-smart practices. It prompted him to speak out, albeit without the intention to hurt the company.

Not that good ol’ Musk saw it that way. In fact, he and Tesla are gunning for Tripp for all he’s worth:

“You’re a horrible human being,” [Musk] wrote in an e-mail to Tripp, according to the Post. (Tripp’s reply: “Putting cars on the road with safety issues is being a horrible human being!”)

Tesla told the Post that Tripp was not a whistleblower, but instead had made exaggerated and false claims in an attempt to hurt the company. Tesla lawyers have sought a court order for Tripp’s electronic communications, and have claimed Tripp was “disruptive and combative” with colleagues.

In its lawsuit, Tesla claims to have suffered “cruel and unjust hardship” thanks to Tripp, including “lost business, lost profits, and damage to its goodwill.” The company is seeking an unknown amount in damages, which will be decided at trial.

Eish, Elon Musk is really going in hard on the poor bugger, who had to seek official protection as a whistleblower.

Not that it’s doing anything to boost Tesla’s public image.

What with recent shenanigans like Musk getting sassy on investors to trolling another billionaire on Twitter, the CEO is merely digging himself deeper into his ever-growing hole of shame.

Methinks Musk needs a break from all of this drama.

[source:vanityfair]