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‘ A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car delivery location in Norway, seriously burning his hands and preventing a disaster, he got an email from Elon Musk.
“Congratulations for saving the day!” Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote in March 2019.
But what started as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has devolved into an epic battle between the carmaker and Krupski, a service technician. The fight has spawned lawsuits in Norway and the United States and caught the attention of regulators in several countries.
After initially being hailed as a savior, Krupski said in an interview with The New York Times, he was harassed, threatened and eventually fired after complaining about what he considered grave safety problems at his workplace near Oslo. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a crew that helped prepare Teslas for buyers but became so frustrated with the company that last year he handed over reams of data from the carmaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.
The data contained lists of Tesla employees, including Musk, often with their Social Security numbers and other personal information. There were thousands of accident reports and other internal Tesla communications that Handelsblatt used as the basis for stories about flaws with the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance software.
The data also provided the basis for stories by Handelsblatt and Wired magazine about how much trouble Tesla was having manufacturing the Cybertruck pickup, which the company has said will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years behind schedule. (Some of the information came from a second, unidentified Tesla employee.)
Krupski said he had gotten access to sensitive data simply by entering search terms in an internal company website, raising questions about how Tesla protected the privacy of thousands of employees and its own secrets. ‘
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-vs-musk-w...11998.html
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If I’m not mistaken, this is an old story that’s been posted on the forum before. If so, why are you posting it again? Again, I could be mistaken, maybe it was about another publication running a similar story?
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Carnos Jax wrote:
If I’m not mistaken, this is an old story that’s been posted on the forum before. If so, why are you posting it again? Again, I could be mistaken, maybe it was about another publication running a similar story?
Helps when you read the story.
Krupski remained anonymous until he spoke on the record to Handelsblatt last week...
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Step 1: Read the article…
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So then, is this the same story as before, except now the source has come forward?
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btfc wrote:
Step 1: Read the article…
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TL;DR is that the new NYT article republished at Yahoo is more about the whistleblower's experience/life. It doesn't detaill the reported unintended acceleration, phantom braking, or accident reports related to FSD.
earlier stories:
TheVerge -
"A Tesla whistleblower has leaked 100GB of data to the German outlet Handelsblatt containing thousands of customer complaints that raise serious concerns about the safety of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) features.
The complaints, which were reported across the US, Europe, and Asia, span from 2015 to March 2022. During this period, Handelsblatt says Tesla customers reported over 2,400 self-acceleration issues and 1,500 braking problems, including 139 reports of “unintentional emergency braking” and 383 reports of “phantom stops” from false collision warnings.
Some of the incidents mentioned by Handelsblatt include descriptions of how cars “suddenly brake or accelerate abruptly.” While some drivers safely gained control of their vehicle, Handelsblatt says others “ended up in a ditch, hit walls or crashed into oncoming vehicles.”
The documents obtained by the outlet also outline Tesla’s policies when responding to the issues customers experience and suggest that Tesla likes to keep its vehicles’ data under wraps. Here are some of the policies described by Handelsblatt (translated with Google Translate):
For each incident there are bullet points for the “technical review”. The employees who enter this review into the system regularly make it clear that the report is “for internal use only”. Each entry also contains the note in bold print that information, if at all, may only be passed on “VERBALLY to the customer”.
“Do not copy and paste the report below into an email, text message, or leave it in a voicemail to the customer,” it said. Vehicle data should also not be released without permission. If, despite the advice, “an involvement of a lawyer cannot be prevented”, this must be recorded.
According to a note from Handelsblatt editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes, the outlet’s editorial team sent Tesla several questions about the data it received. Instead of answering them, Matthes says Tesla “demanded that the data be deleted and spoke of data theft.” We still don’t know who provided Handelsblatt with the leaked information, but Matthes notes that the outlet received it from “several informants.”
This is far from the first time concerns about Tesla’s FSD have been raised. Tesla’s FSD capability enables all the features that come with Tesla’s Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot features, including automatic lane changes, autosteering, auto parking, and more. Despite these concerns, Tesla made its FSD beta available to everyone in November of last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started looking into Tesla’s FSD software in January after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company would give users the option to turn off “steering wheel nag.” Around one month later, the agency deemed the capability a crash risk, leading Tesla to recall 362,758 cars equipped with FSD and pause FSD installations."
Jalopnik -
Whistleblower Drops 100 Gigabytes Of Tesla Secrets To German News Site: Report
The files contain over 1,000 accident reports involving phantom braking or unintended acceleration--mostly in the U.S. and Germany.
"A German news outlet sifted through over 23,000 of Tesla’s internal files and found a disturbing trend of brushing off customers complaining about dangerous Autopilot glitches while covering the company’s ass.
The publication Handelsblatt got its hands on the data through an unnamed informant. Handelsblatt confirmed the data’s authenticity with Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, which found no evidence of doctoring or fabrication in the files. Tesla attempted to stop the publication from using this data in its reporting and even threatened legal action against Handelsblatt. The publication, however, decided this was one of the extraordinary circumstances when reporting on such a data breach would be legal under European Union law.
It posted “My autopilot almost killed me”: Tesla files cast doubt on Elon Musk’s promises on Thursday. The story is both in German and behind a paywall, but the English translation is of excellent quality. Here’s a bit of the meat of it:
The Tesla files contain more than 2,400 self-acceleration complaints and more than 1,500 braking function problems, including 139 cases of unintentional emergency braking and 383 reported phantom stops resulting from false collision warnings. The number of crashes is more than 1000. A table of incidents involving driver assistance systems where customers have expressed safety concerns has more than 3000 entries.
The oldest complaints available to the Handelsblatt date from 2015, the most recent from March 2022. During this period, Tesla delivered around 2.6 million vehicles with the autopilot software. Most of the incidents took place in the US , but there are also complaints from Europe and Asia in the documents - including many from German Tesla drivers.
The Handelsblatt contacted dozens of customers from several countries. All confirmed the information from the Tesla files. In discussions, they gave insights into their experiences with the autopilot. Some disclosed their communication with the US automaker, others showed Handelsblatt reporters videos of the accident.?
Customers from the U.S. and Europe told Handelsblatt Tesla wasn’t too interested in assisting with their issues, but seemed more intent on covering for the company. It turns out, this was explicit policy at Tesla:
How did the company deal with complaints? The Tesla files also provide information about this. The files show that employees have precise guidelines for communicating with customers. The top priority is obviously: offer as little attack surface as possible.
For each incident there are bullet points for the “technical review”. The employees who enter this review into the system regularly make it clear that the report is “for internal use only”. Each entry also contains a note in bold type that information, if at all, may only be passed on “VERBALLY to the customer”.
=“Do not copy and paste the report below into an email, text message, or leave it in a voicemail to the customer,” it said. Vehicle data should also not be released without permission. If, despite the advice, “an involvement of a lawyer cannot be prevented”, this must be recorded.
Customers that Handelsblatt spoke to have the impression that Tesla employees avoid written communication. “They never sent emails, everything was always verbal,” says the doctor from California, whose Tesla said it accelerated on its own in the fall of 2021 and crashed into two concrete pillars.?
Throughout the report, there is a refrain familiar to anyone who covers Tesla: “Tesla did not answer questions about the allegations from customers.” Some told Handelsblatt they either sold their Teslas or tried to give them back to the company, saying they couldn’t in good conscience let anyone else drive the car.
Elon Musk and Tesla had a hell of a 2022, and this year is shaping up to be no different. It was revealed a 2016 video of a self-driving Tesla was likely a hoax made with Musk’s approval and participation. Multiple lawsuits from everyone from shareholders to surviving family members of crash victims, are about to have their day in court. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Department of Justice are closing in.
The report goes into breathtaking detail of just about every hurdle Tesla is facing right now, and you can read the whole report in German and English here."
https: //www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/elektromobilitaet-mein-autopilot-hat-mich-fast-umgebracht-tesla-files-naehren-zweifel-an-elon-musks-versprechen/29166564.html
New Yahoo story:
Man vs. Musk: A Whistleblower Creates Headaches for Tesla
A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car delivery location in Norway, seriously burning his hands and preventing a disaster, he got an email from Elon Musk.
“Congratulations for saving the day!” Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote in March 2019.
But what started as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has devolved into an epic battle between the carmaker and Krupski, a service technician. The fight has spawned lawsuits in Norway and the United States and caught the attention of regulators in several countries.
Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times
After initially being hailed as a savior, Krupski said in an interview with The New York Times, he was harassed, threatened and eventually fired after complaining about what he considered grave safety problems at his workplace near Oslo. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a crew that helped prepare Teslas for buyers but became so frustrated with the company that last year he handed over reams of data from the carmaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.
The data contained lists of Tesla employees, including Musk, often with their Social Security numbers and other personal information. There were thousands of accident reports and other internal Tesla communications that Handelsblatt used as the basis for stories about flaws with the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance software.
The data also provided the basis for stories by Handelsblatt and Wired magazine about how much trouble Tesla was having manufacturing the Cybertruck pickup, which the company has said will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years behind schedule. (Some of the information came from a second, unidentified Tesla employee.)
Krupski said he had gotten access to sensitive data simply by entering search terms in an internal company website, raising questions about how Tesla protected the privacy of thousands of employees and its own secrets.
The Data Protection Authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla has its European headquarters, is investigating whether the breach violated privacy laws. A spokesperson for the authority confirmed that it was investigating but declined to comment further.
Tesla and three lawyers representing the company did not reply to requests for comment.
In the United States, Benson Pai, a former Tesla production worker, has sued the automaker in federal court in California, claiming that lax security by Tesla exposed employee information that could be sold to criminals. Lawyers for Pai are seeking approval from a judge to pursue the case as a class action on behalf of tens of thousands of Tesla employees.
Krupski shared the data with Aaron Greenspan, a prominent Tesla critic and short-seller, who urged him to provide information he had collected about Autopilot to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The safety agency has had a long-running investigation into the software, which can steer, accelerate and stop a car on its own but requires a driver to be ready to take control at any moment. The agency has interviewed Krupski several times, he said, an indication that his information was taken seriously.
Greenspan said he had begun closing out his short positions in Tesla shortly after hearing from Krupski.
The U.S. safety agency has confirmed that it is investigating whether Autopilot played a role in hundreds of accidents, some fatal, but declined to comment on any interactions with Krupski. Tesla has maintained that Autopilot makes cars safer and recently prevailed against a lawsuit that had claimed the software was responsible for a fatal crash in California.
Krupski and Greenspan also wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission raising questions about Tesla’s accounting practices, based in part on the data Krupski had collected. He said he did not know what the commission had done with the information.
The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.
Krupski remained anonymous until he spoke on the record to Handelsblatt last week.
In the interview with the Times, Krupski, 38, said he was unemployed and had exhausted his savings. He has served Tesla with formal notice that he intends to sue for compensation, but cannot pursue the case further until he scrapes together enough money to pay a lawyer. Unlike lawyers in the United States, lawyers in Norway are not allowed to work on commission, collecting a share of any award if they win but nothing if they lose.
Tormod Tingstad, an Oslo lawyer, is representing Krupski free of charge while they try to raise money.
None of this could have been foreseen on March 30, 2019, when Krupski, who had been hired only a few months earlier, was part of a crew summoned on short notice to prepare Teslas for delivery to customers in Norway, where electric vehicles account for more than 80% of new car sales.
Tesla, which sells cars directly to buyers, was using space in an exhibition hall near Oslo to deliver vehicles. Thousands of people were visiting a motor show in the same complex.
Around noon, a charging device that another employee had improperly modified burst into flames beneath a Model 3 sedan. Krupski yanked the device away and, with his bare hands, pulled out wiring, pipes and other components that were burning and melting. He used rags and towels to suffocate the flames.
“It is fair to say that if it wasn’t for his action, the result would have been a car on fire,” Krupski’s manager wrote in an email to Musk the next day. Krupski said the fire could have spread, endangering workers and customers waiting nearby and forcing evacuation of the motor show.
The only person seriously injured was Krupski, who was hospitalized with severe burns but has recovered.
After Musk congratulated Krupski, the technician replied with complaints about safety practices at Tesla’s Norwegian operation. On the day of the fire, he wrote, there were no fire extinguishers, cardboard boxes and other flammable material were strewn about, and employees were not briefed about where they would be working.
“OK, please let me know if there’s anything we should still do,” Musk replied, according to a copy of the email included in legal documents prepared by Tingstad.
But Krupski’s direct communications with the Tesla CEO did not sit well with his bosses in Norway. According to Krupski, his supervisor began questioning his performance and telling him he had no future at Tesla.
“Long story short I am being fired,” Krupski wrote to Musk in late April 2019, less than four weeks after the fire. Musk replied, “I can’t read emails unless critical to Tesla.” That was the end of their correspondence.
In the months that followed, Krupski said, he was threatened and harassed by co-workers and exiled to a basement. One co-worker threatened to stab him in the back with a screwdriver, he said. Krupski and other workers were furloughed during the pandemic, and he missed work because of stress-related health problems. Then, in 2022, he was fired after being accused of bad behavior and poor time management, and of being a negative influence.
His bosses also said Krupski had taken pictures at a Tesla facility in violation of company policy. He said he had taken photos to document safety issues, which included use of a rolling table that employees put under a car when removing a battery. The table was designed to bear a maximum of 500 kilograms (about 1,100 pounds), Krupski said, while the batteries weighed substantially more. If a table collapsed, he said, workers could be seriously injured or killed.
In a letter to Krupski’s lawyer, a Norwegian law firm representing Tesla said the company would dispute that he had been subject to retaliation. The letter accused Krupski of misappropriating company information and threatened to seek damages from him.
Tesla has obtained an injunction from a Norwegian court ordering Krupski not to distribute any more company information. The court also seized his laptop and turned it over to Tesla. The company notified employees of the data breach on Aug. 18, about three months after it learned that Handelsblatt had the information.
Information including work email addresses, compensation and Social Security numbers might have been leaked, Tesla told employees in an email, but said, “We have no evidence that any personal information was misused or will be used in a manner that could harm you.”
Krupski said that he had suffered from depression, anxiety and sleeplessness as a result of his battle with Tesla, but that he felt relieved to no longer be anonymous.
“I feel like just by going public I have a new rush of energy,” he said. “I have motivation that, OK, I can maybe start building my life again.”
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Wow.
This is the first I've read of any of this, even though it was posted before.
The 'only because it's Tesla' doesn't seem to mitigate as much, to my eye.
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Tesla needs to be whipped into shape without destroying it.
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kj wrote:
Tesla needs to be whipped into shape without destroying it.
What if some billionaire slash genius would buy it, take it private, fire all the unproductive workers, and whip it into shape that way?
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