Fired Tesla engineer Cristina Balan wins preliminary victory over Elon Musk. She claims she was threatened into silence after Model S problems.
A former Tesla engineer, Cristina Balan, has won an important legal victory after she was fired for being a whistleblower in a 2014 case.
She claims that she and her colleagues were threatened with deportation from the United States after they raised concerns about Model S brake problems with Elon Musk.
Cristina Balan was born in Romania. She was deeply involved in the development of the Model S. Her initials are even on the sedan's battery pack.
In 2014, she approached Elon Musk directly. It was about safety issues. She believed that the car's floor mats could pose a risk. The accelerator could potentially get caught under the driver's floor mat.
Problems that Toyota has also had and had to apologize for. Balan also claimed that Musk chose the supplier based on friendship.
According to her, the quality of the cars was not decisive.
The Tesla boss had sent an email to all employees in March 2013. The email described an open-door policy for product problems.
– You can talk to your boss's boss without the boss's permission, you can talk directly to a deputy director in another department, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission, the email said.
Conflict over the safety of the Tesla Model S
That email made Balan feel safe. She thought she could talk freely with Musk about the problem with the floor mats. She arranged a meeting with him.
But when she showed up, Musk wasn't there. Instead, she was greeted by lawyers. There were also "big men in uniforms," Balan said in court.
They forced her to resign, says the former engineer. Tesla has a different interpretation of the incident.
Balan subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Tesla. However, the company forced the case to go to arbitration. The arbitration dismissed Balan's claim.
She appealed the decision. The case was delayed several times. Among other things, because Balan was fighting cancer. Something she is now over.
The fight for redress against Tesla
She eventually managed to have the arbitration case dismissed. She represented herself during the case.
This is reported by the BBC .
Her goal now is to take Tesla to court in a completely normal way. She hopes this can influence corporate policy in general.
"I want to clear my name. I wish Elon Musk had the decency to apologize."
The case between Cristina Balan and Tesla continues, highlighting potential conflicts between employees and management.
However, Tesla doesn't just have personnel problems in the US. It also has them in Sweden. Just across the Øresund, the brand is refusing to sign a collective agreement with its employees.
This has triggered a blockade of the car brand that is not over yet. Most recently, a subcontractor had to apologize for breaking the blockade against Tesla. Read more about it here .
