A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car delivery location in Norway, severely burning his hands and averting a disaster, he received an email from Elon Musk.
“Congratulations on saving the day!” Tesla CEO Mr. Musk wrote in March 2019.
But what started as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has turned into an epic battle between the car manufacturer and Mr. Krupski, a service technician. The battle has led to lawsuits in Norway and the United States and attracted the attention of regulators in several countries.
After initially being hailed as a savior, Mr. Krupski said in an interview with The New York Times, he was harassed, threatened and eventually fired after complaining about what he considered serious safety problems at his workplace near Oslo. Mr. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a team that helped get Teslas ready for buyers but became so frustrated with the company that last year he handed over large amounts of data from the automaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper .
The data includes lists of Tesla employees, including Mr. 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 in the company’s Autopilot driver assistance software.
The data also formed the basis for stories from Handelsblatt and Wired magazine about how much trouble Tesla was having with production of the Cybertruck pickup, which the company says will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years later than planned. (Some of the information came from a second, unidentified Tesla employee.)
Mr. Krupski said he accessed sensitive data by simply entering search terms on an internal company website, raising questions about how Tesla protected the privacy of thousands of employees and its own secrets.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla has its European headquarters, is investigating whether the breach violates privacy laws. A spokeswoman for the authority confirmed it was investigating but declined to comment further.
Tesla and three lawyers representing the company did not respond to requests for comment.
In the United States, Benson Pai, a former Tesla production employee, has sued the automaker in federal court in California, arguing that lax security by Tesla exposed employee information that could be sold to criminals. Lawyers for Mr. Pai are seeking a judge’s approval to pursue the case as a class action on behalf of tens of thousands of Tesla workers.
Mr. Krupski shared the data with Aaron Greenspan, a prominent Tesla critic and short seller, who urged him to provide the information he gathered about Autopilot to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The safety service has conducted a long-term investigation into the software, which can steer, accelerate and stop a car independently, but requires a driver to be ready to take control at any time. The agency interviewed Mr. Krupski several times, he said, an indication that his information was taken seriously.
Mr. Greenspan said he began closing his short positions in Tesla shortly after hearing from Mr. Krupski.
The US safety agency has confirmed it is investigating whether Autopilot played a role in hundreds of crashes, some of them fatal, but declined to comment on any interactions with Mr Krupski. Tesla has maintained that Autopilot makes cars safer and recently prevailed against a lawsuit claiming the software was responsible for a fatal crash in California.
Mr. Krupski and Mr. Greenspan also wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission raising questions about Tesla’s accounting practices, based in part on data Mr. Krupski collected. He said he did not know what the committee had done with the information.
The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Krupski remained anonymous until he spoke officially to Handelsblatt last week.
In the interview with The Times, the 38-year-old Mr. Krupski that he was unemployed and had used up his savings. He has formally notified Tesla that he intends to sue for damages, but cannot pursue the case further until he can raise enough money to pay for a lawyer. Unlike lawyers in the United States, lawyers in Norway are not allowed to work on commission, collecting a share of the prize if they win but nothing if they lose.
Tormod Tingstad, an Oslo lawyer, is representing Mr Krupski for free as they try to raise money.
None of this could have been foreseen on March 30, 2019, when Mr. Krupski, who had been hired just a few months earlier, was part of a crew called in at short notice to prepare Teslas for delivery to customers in Norway , where electric vehicles account for more than 80 percent of new car sales.
Tesla, which sells cars directly to buyers, used space in an exhibition hall near Oslo to deliver cars. Thousands of people attended a car show in the same complex.
Around noon, a charging device that another employee had improperly adjusted burst into flames underneath a Model 3 sedan. Mr. Krupski ripped the device away and with his bare hands pulled out wiring, pipes and other components that burned and melted. He used rags and towels to extinguish the flames.
“It is fair to say that had it not been for his action, the result would have been a car on fire,” Mr. Krupski’s manager wrote in an email to Mr. Musk the next day. Mr Krupski said the fire could have spread, endangering workers and customers waiting nearby and forcing the evacuation of the car show.
The only person seriously injured was Mr Krupski, who was hospitalized with severe burns but has since recovered.
After Mr. Musk congratulated Mr. Krupski, the engineer responded with complaints about safety practices at Tesla’s Norwegian facility. On the day of the fire, he writes, there were no fire extinguishers, cardboard boxes and other flammable materials were strewn about, and employees were not informed about where they would be working.
“Okay, please let me know if there is anything else we need to do,” Mr. Musk responded, according to a copy of the email included in the legal documents prepared by Mr. Tingstad.
But Mr. Krupski’s direct communications with Tesla’s CEO did not sit well with his bosses in Norway. According to Mr. Krupski, his supervisor began questioning his performance and telling him he had no future at Tesla.
“Long story short, I’m getting fired,” Mr. Krupski wrote to Mr. Musk in late April 2019, less than four weeks after the fire. Mr Musk replied: “I can’t read emails unless they are critical to Tesla.” That was the end of their correspondence.
In the months that followed, Mr. Krupski said, he was threatened and harassed by colleagues and banished to a basement. A colleague threatened to stab him in the back with a screwdriver, he said. Mr. Krupski and other employees were furloughed during the pandemic and he missed work due to stress-related health issues. He was subsequently fired in 2022 after being accused of bad behavior, poor time management and being a negative influence.
His bosses also said that Mr. Krupski had taken photos at a Tesla facility, which was against company policy. He said he took photos to document safety issues, including the use of a rolling table that workers placed under a car when removing a battery. The table was designed to support a maximum of 500 kilograms, Mr. Krupski said, while the batteries weighed significantly more. If a table collapsed, he said, workers could be seriously injured or killed.
In a letter to Mr. Krupski’s lawyer, a Norwegian law firm representing Tesla said the company would dispute that he had been the victim of retaliation. The letter accused Mr. Krupski of misappropriating company information and threatened to sue him for damages.
Tesla has received an order from a Norwegian court ordering Mr Krupski to stop distributing company information. The court also seized his laptop and turned it over to Tesla. The company notified employees of the data breach on August 18, about three months after it learned Handelsblatt had the information.
Information including work email addresses, compensation and Social Security numbers could have been leaked, Tesla told employees in an email, but said: “We have no evidence that personal information has been or will be misused in a way that could harm you.”
Mr Krupski said he suffered from depression, anxiety and insomnia as a result of his battle with Tesla, but felt relieved to no longer be anonymous.
“I feel like just going public gives me a new rush of energy,” he said. “I have the motivation that, okay, maybe I can start building my life again.”
Noam Scheiber reporting contributed.
