.@elonmusk has always been vicious to anyone sharing info about his businesses. He once sued a source of mine for revealing shady practices at #Tesla, and security testified that Musk had his lackeys hack my source's personal devices.
They even looked at pictures of my source's kids, according to one deposition.
What was my source revealing? The sloppy why Tesla handled, disposed of, and accounted for toxic battery waste that could (and did) lead to fires.
If you think it's new that @elonmusk is running an operation with no controls — quality or otherwise — know that this is nothing new. It's just that he used to be able to hide it at his factories.
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Back in 2016, Tesla made a video pumping its self-driving product but an engineer recently testified that that video was staged. reuters.com/technology/tes…
Staging the functionality of a product that does not work is classic @elonmusk . He also did it with a solar roof product in 2016 — an effort to keep SolarCity from going bankrupt. businessinsider.com/listen-the-fut…
I know, this all sounds like fraud. But the SEC has been loosening the the definition of what fraud means so much in the last few years that you basically have to send a Nigerian Prince email to show intent these days. businessinsider.com/corporate-amer…
How do I know so much about how @elonmusk does things? I spent 3 years investigating Tesla at @BusinessInsider from 2018-2021. Here are some of sloppy, dangerous, callous, things I learned:
Tesla put batteries with potentially defective cooling systems in people's cars. And they knew about it. businessinsider.com/tesla-faulty-b…
That time Elon told his engineers to stop doing brake tests on Model 3s. The tests were finding too many defects, and he wanted speed up the manufacturing process. Is that "hardcore engineering?" businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-mus…