Elon Musk sent an email to the staff saying that a disgruntled employee broke into the company’s manufacturing operating system and sent highly sensitive data to unknown third parties. The worker was denied a promotion and he did all the damage he could to the company.
An investigation is being carried out by Tesla into the matter. “As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die,” Musk said. He referenced Wall Street short sellers “who have already lost billions of dollars,” oil and gas companies that “don’t love” to see solar power and electric cars advancing, and automakers that produce gasoline and diesel vehicles. “If they’re willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they’re willing to cheat in other ways?” he said.
Tesla is currently racing to ramp up the production of the Model 3 sedan to 5,000 cars a week and was planning to shrink the Tesla’s workforce to increase profitability. More than 3,000 workers lost their jobs and it is no surprise that people are pissed at the company.
In an email on Monday, Elon Musk asked the workers to stay vigilant and be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary after a fire briefly halted car output. Elon Musk called it a strange incident hard to explain and said the small fire on a manufacturing line stopped production for several hours.
“Could just be a random event, but as Andy Grove said, ‘Only the paranoid survive,’” Musk wrote Monday, referring to the late chairman and CEO of Intel Corp. “Please be on the alert for anything that’s not in the best interests of our company.”
Tesla is not in a position to afford manufacturing setbacks at the moment as it is racing to meet the targets of the Model 3 vehicles which the shareholders were told that the company will quite likely achieve. The company is depending on this to generate profit and cash in the third and fourth quarter of the year.
The authenticity of the news has been confirmed by a Tesla spokesperson and the fire was put out in a matter of seconds. Nobody was injured during the incident and the production is now back on track. Elon Musk needs to take a better grip at the handle as the stock has been on the rise in the recent week after a rough patch and this could see the trend change.
