Former Tesla Engineer Says Elon Musk Threatened to Deport Her Team for Pointing Out a Problem With the Brakes

A Tesla engineer has accused Tesla of threatening her team with deportation after bringing up a brake safety issue with CEO Elon Musk in 2014.

Balan was fired after informing Musk that she was worried floor carpets could curl up underneath the pedals in Model S vehicles, she says, in a major braking safety hazard.

According to Balan, she was simply following Musk's orders to "talk to me" if staffers thought it was the "fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company," according to an email he sent to all employees in 2013, as quoted by Electrek.

Instead of listening to her concerns, Balan says that a team of Tesla lawyers threatened to deport members of her team who were waiting on green card applications, if she didn't resign on the spot — which she did, in protest. The members had stood behind her decision to raise flags over the floor carpet issue.

The former engineer, who has been in remission for stage 3 breast cancer, called Musk a "monster" and "pure evil" in an interview with The Times of London, revealing that she's extending her already years-long legal battle against the mercurial CEO and his carmaker.

It's yet another instance of Tesla employees becoming victims of  Musk's infamously vindictive and unpredictable management style. Workers have had to deal with unsafe working conditions, long hours, rampant racism, mass layoffs, and retaliation from the upper ranks.

Musk has garnered a reputation for firing employees who speak up. Case in point, last year, Musk sacked the company's 500-worker-strong Supercharger team, dumbfounding investors. According to staffers, the company's former head of EV charging, Rebecca Tinucci, had angered him during a one-on-one meeting shortly before the team was fired.

Balan has been caught up in the messy legal battle for over a decade now. After being fired, Tela publicly accused her of embezzling company funds for a so-called "secret project," accusations she has repeatedly denied. The incident motivated her to sue Tesla for defamation in 2019. However, an arbitrator ruled in favor of the carmaker due to California's statute of limitations.

Tesla then tried to confirm the arbitration ruling by bringing the case back to a district court in California. But Balan won an appeal against the decision last week, opening up new legal possibilities for her case.

"We are hoping we will start a new lawsuit and we will have the chance to take on Elon Musk in front of a jury and judge," she told the BBC.

It remains to be seen where the legal spat will land, and experts agree it will likely take time for the battle to reach its conclusion.

To many of them, Tesla's vindictive behavior isn't anything new.

"Tesla is among the many corporations that force employees and customers into opaque arbitration processes and deploy aggressive strategies to retaliate against employees who voice criticism of corporate practices," Stanford professor Anat Admati told the BBC.

Balan's attorney, Bill Moran, has vowed to "revive" the case, saying in a statement that "we are confident we can secure her either a new arbitration or alternatively a trial in court so that her case can be heard on the merits after so many years."

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