A disgruntled Tesla employee broke into the company’s manufacturing operating system and sent highly sensitive data to unknown third parties, according to an e-mail Elon Musk sent to staff.
The worker, who had been denied a promotion, did “quite extensive and damaging sabotage” to Tesla’s operations, Musk wrote in the memo late on Sunday, which was reported in full by CNBC. While a spokesman declined to comment, an employee who asked not to be identified confirmed he received the e-mail.
Tesla is conducting an in-depth investigation into the matter, including whether the worker was acting alone, with others at the company or with any outside organisations, Musk wrote.
“As you know, there are a long list of organisations that want Tesla to die,” Musk said. He referenced Wall Street short sellers “who have already lost billions of dollars”, oil and gas companies that “don’t love” to see solar power and electric cars advancing, and automakers that produce petrol and diesel vehicles. “If they’re willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they’re willing to cheat in other ways?” he said.
Musk’s e-mail comes as Tesla races to ramp up production of its critical Model 3 sedan to 5 000 cars a week. Last week, Musk announced that he was reorganising the company and shrinking Tesla’s workforce by 9% in a bid for profitability. More than 3 000 workers lost their jobs, and notices filed with the state of California revealed that over 500 employees in Fremont and Palo Alto were dismissed.
In a Monday e-mail, Musk invoked a late tech titan in urging workers to keep an eye out for any funny business after a fire briefly halted car output. In a “strange incident that was hard to explain”, Musk wrote that a small fire on a manufacturing line had stopped production for several hours.
“Could just be a random event, but as Andy Grove said, ‘Only the paranoid survive,’” Musk wrote on Monday, referring to the late chairman and CEO of Intel. “Please be on the alert for anything that’s not in the best interests of our company.”
Under pressure
Tesla can ill afford manufacturing setbacks now. It’s racing to meet a target to build 5 000 Model 3s a week by the end of this month, a goal Musk told shareholders on 5 June that the company was “quite likely” to achieve. The company’s forecasts for generating profit and cash in the third and fourth quarters of this year are based on this objective, and falling short would reignite concerns about whether the company may need to raise more capital.
A Tesla spokeswoman confirmed the authenticity of the Monday e-mail. Smoldering in an air filter in the welding area of Tesla’s body line was extinguished in a matter of seconds, she said. Production has resumed and there were no injuries or significant equipment damage, she added.
Tesla shares climbed for a seventh straight day, jumping 3.5% to US$370.83 on Monday. More than $19-billion has been added to the automaker’s market capitalisation in the past month, in part due to the confidence Musk has expressed in achieving the Model 3 production target. In a tweet on Sunday, Musk warned that those betting against the company “have about three weeks before their short position explodes”.
Tesla is no stranger to concerns about sabotage. The company sued a former oil-services executive in 2016 for impersonating Musk in an e-mail to former Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler. In the lawsuit, Tesla said the e-mail was part of an oil-industry effort to undermine the company’s push for energy-efficient transportation. — Reported by Dana Hull and Josh Eidelson, with assistance from Kartikay Mehrotra, (c) 2018 Bloomberg LP
