For a brief moment, Lukasz Krupski was a Tesla hero, the kind of employee the company wished every one of its technicians, factory operatives, and administrative workers would model themselves on. Now he’s on the company’s dartboard after leaking sensitive personnel data and inside information about the firm’s safety problems and its difficulty bringing the much-delayed Cybertruck to market. What the hell happened?
Let’s start with the hero part. In March 2019 Krupski was part of a team preparing Teslas for delivery to customers in Norway, who would collect their cars from an exhibition hall in Oslo because of Tesla’s direct-sell business model. A fire broke out in a charging device dangerously modified by another employee and, sensing imminent disaster, Krupski pulled the charger from underneath a Model 3 and used his bare hands to pull out wires that were melting, suffering bad burns in the process. After being notified of Krupski’s selfless actions, CEO Elon Musk emailed him personally to say: “Congratulations for saving the day!” But things quickly went sour, the New York Times reports.
When Krupski replied to Musk’s email he raised the issue of lax safety at Tesla’s Norwegian operation, telling the big chief that there were no fire extinguishers nearby on the day of the accident and that cardboard boxes and other flammable materials were lying around. Musk answered back: “OK, please let me know if there’s anything we should still do.”
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Krupski’s immediate bosses and co-workers seemed less enthusiastic about his chats with Musk and his safety concerns, and he claims he was told he had no future at Tesla by his superiors, while another employee threatened to stab him in the back with a screwdriver. Eventually, in 2022, he was fired, having been accused of poor time management and of being a negative influence on other staff, but also for taking photographs on-site, which is against policy. Krupski had taken snaps of the rolling table used to put under an EV when removing a battery, alleging that its 500 kg (1,100 lbs) weight limit was below the actual weight of a battery pack, so put workers’ lives in danger.
Krupski ultimately became so frustrated by what he saw as Tesla’s poor attitude to safety that he leaked masses of the company’s internal data to a German newspaper, Handelsblatt. The data featured internal company documents about problems with Tesla’s Autopilot software, and about its difficulties bringing the Cybertruck to market, but also sensitive personnel info, including, in some cases, social security numbers.
Understandably, the case has sparked multiple lawsuits and legal investigations, the NYT reports. America’s NHTSA has interviewed Krupski more than once while conducting its probe into Autopilot, while lawyers in the country are trying to build a class action case on behalf of Tesla employees over the employee data leak. The Data Protection Authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla’s European HQ is located, is considering whether the data breach violated privacy laws, and Krupski, who only revealed his identity publically last week, wants to sue Tesla for compensation, claiming he was unfairly treated, though he currently can’t afford a lawyer.