Tesla Says “Operations Disrupted” Last Month After “Malicious Sabotage” Attempt At Fremont

In what we would guess is likely a harbinger of less than stellar operating results to come, Tesla has announced that it has caught yet another pesky “malicious saboteur” at its Fremont factory.

A memo was circulated about two weeks ago at the $400 billion company that the rogue employee was fired last month, according to The Daily Mail. 

“Operations at the facility were disrupted briefly,” the company’s VP of legal, Al Prescott, said. Meanwhile, it appears Prescott is commenting because Tesla still does not have a General Counsel. 

Tesla said they got to the issue quickly. A company e-mail stated: “Two weeks ago, our IT and InfoSec teams determined than [sic] an employee had maliciously sabotaged a part of the Factory. Their quick actions prevented further damage and production was running smoothly again a few hours later.”

Tesla hasn’t identified the person who was fired but says that the individual destroyed a company computer during the incident in question. 

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“Ultimately, after being shown the irrefutable evidence, the employee confessed. As a result, we terminated employment,” Tesla’s e-mail said. It continued: “We place tremendous trust in our employees and value everyone’s contribution. However, whatever the personal motivations of the attacker were, these are crimes, violations of our code of conduct, and are unfair to other employees.”

The e-mail concluded: “We will take aggressive action to defend the company and our people.”

Recall, this isn’t the first time Musk has warned of ‘sabotage’ at Tesla. Back in 2018, Musk warned that a ‘saboteur’ was on the loose within the company’s ranks, claiming the person “tweaked code on internal products” and “sent company data without authorization”.

This person was later identified to be whistleblower Martin Tripp, who alleged that Tesla was putting damaged and dangerous batteries into vehicles it was manufacturing.

We wonder if this incident of ‘sabotage’ leads to more whistleblower allegations…