<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5112f45e6bb3f73a3b00000a-793/boeing-787-dreamliner-battery-5.jpg?maxX=400&amp;maxY=300" border="0" alt="boeing 787 dreamliner battery" width="400" height="300" /></div><p class="source">NTSB</p></div><keyword id="6357957" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Boeing">Boeing</keyword> is considering a fix for the batteries in its <keyword id="85416" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dreamliner">Dreamliner</keyword> jet that appears to take into account <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-those-787-dreamliner-batteries-are-fundamentally-dangerous-2013-1">criticism by Elon Musk</a>, founder of Tesla and SpaceX.</p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323452204578288020674930066.html">According to the Wall Street Journal</a>, Boeing may increase the amount of space between the cells in the lithium-ion batteries, as a way to limit the spread of "thermal runaway," the term for when <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-dreamliner-battery-problems-caused-by-uncontrollable-overheating-2013-2">uncontrollable heat damages the battery</a>.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/elon-musk-boeing-787-battery-fundamentally-unsafe-381627/">email to the aviation publication Flightglobal</a>, Musk wrote:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Unfortunately, the pack architecture supplied to Boeing is inherently unsafe. Large cells without enough space between them to isolate against the cell-to-cell thermal domino effect means it is simply a matter of time before there are more incidents of this nature.</p>
<p>In a Wall Street Journal video report today, <a href="http://live.wsj.com/video/boeing-revising-batteries-to-get-787-back-in-air/B5194C1C-3440-4274-A2BB-ABABF17DCC29.html?KEYWORDS=JON+OSTROWER#!B5194C1C-3440-4274-A2BB-ABABF17DCC29">Jon Ostrower reported Boeing has told stakeholders and clients</a> it hopes to have a fix for the battery in place by the end of February, but that it is also focusing on finding to root causes of the failures.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the NTSB's probe of the lithium-ion batteries continues. The Board is expected to announce Thursday that its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-dreamliner-investigation-will-now-focus-on-the-faas-approval-of-the-jet-for-flight-2013-2">investigation will turn its focus to the initial decision</a> by the Federal Aviation Administration to approve the plane for flight.</p>
<p>Boeing did get a spot of good news today: The <keyword id="137685" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="FAA">FAA</keyword> has <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/faa-approves-ferry-flight-for-787-dreamliner-2013-2">approved a one-time "ferry flight"</a> for the 787, so a grounded jet can be moved from Texas to Everett, Washington, where Boeing is based, on Thursday.</p>

Boeing May Follow Elon Musk's Advice To Fix The Dreamliner's Battery

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/512676cc69bedd136400001e-1106-830/ntsb-boeing-dreamliner-investigation-battery-10.jpg?maxX=400&amp;maxY=300" border="0" alt="NTSB boeing dreamliner investigation battery" width="400" height="300" /></div><p class="source">NTSB</p><p class="caption">NTSB investigators and <keyword id="6357957" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Boeing">Boeing</keyword> engineers examine the type of lithium-ion battery used in the <keyword id="85416" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dreamliner">Dreamliner</keyword>.</p></div>Boeing will meet with the <keyword id="137685" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="FAA">FAA</keyword> tomorrow to present a series of solutions it believes will keep the lithium ion batteries in its Dreamliner jet from future failures.</p>
<p>Ray Conner, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, will present the changes to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/uk-boeing-dreamliner-battery-idUSLNE91J00620130221">Reuters reported</a>.</p>
<p>Together, the solutions Boeing has come up with will constitute an interim fix that will allow the <keyword id="6367788" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Planes">planes</keyword> to resume commercial flights while investigations into the causes of two battery fires continue.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/update-on-dreamliner-battery-failure-probe-2013-2">ongoing NTSB investigation</a> has found that a short circuit in one cell cascaded to the seven others, leading to a thermal runaway: uncontrollable heat and the battery's failure.</p>
<p>To limit the damage done by any future "thermal events," Boeing may increase the gaps between cells in the battery, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-boeings-fix-for-the-dreamliner-2013-2">solution Elon Musk publicly suggested</a> earlier this month.</p>
<p>Boeing has instructed some of its machinists to build high-strength containment boxes, which would surround the batteries and contain any fires that do start, <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020398769_boeingboxesxml.html?prmid=4939">according to the Seattle Times</a>. The battery would also be equipped with a system of tubes to vent any troublesome gases out of the aircraft.</p>
<p>But before any Dreamliners can take flight, the FAA must give its approval. That's not likely to happen tomorrow, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/business/boeing-to-propose-battery-fixes-to-faa.html?_r=0">New York Times reports</a>, but the meeting will mark the beginning of constructive talks aimed at finding a way to return the fuel-efficient jet to service, safely.</p>
<p>If the FAA does give Boeing the go-ahead, the Dreamliners could be back in the air as soon as the third week of March, <a href="http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_02_21_2013_p0-551320.xml&amp;guid=2013-02-21">according to Aviation Week</a>.</p>
<p>Considering the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dreamliner-delays-add-to-nightmare-2013-2">financial damage Boeing has suffered</a> since it halted Dreamliner deliveries, that day cannot come soon enough.</p>

Boeing's Dreamliners Could Be Flying Again Within A Month

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:401px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51112fb6ecad047b7a000005-910/airbus-a350-xwb-rendering-2.jpg?maxX=401&amp;maxY=301" border="0" alt="airbus A350 XWB rendering" width="401" height="301" /></div><p class="source"><keyword id="6356166" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Airbus">Airbus</keyword></p><p class="caption">An A350 XWB in "virtual testing."</p></div>Airbus announced yesterday it secured an order of 25 A350 XWB <keyword id="6367788" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Planes">planes</keyword>, from Los Angeles-based Air Lease Corporation (ALC).</p>
<p>The A350 family of planes is designed to compete with the <keyword id="6357957" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Boeing">Boeing</keyword> 777, its rival's most popular plane. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Still in development, the A350 XWB will be ready for its maiden flight later this year, </span><a href="http://www.airbus.com/no_cache/newsevents/news-events-single/detail/the-a350-xwb-jetliner-makes-its-first-flightvirtually/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=All-news&amp;utm_campaign=RSS">according to Airbus</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">ALC's order is a relief after the </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">French manufacturer did not deliver any A380s in January, <a href="http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:7a78f54e-b3dd-4fa6-ae6e-dff2ffd7bdbb&amp;plckPostId=Blog:7a78f54e-b3dd-4fa6-ae6e-dff2ffd7bdbbPost:9e5b75a3-46d3-4024-87d3-250093f2f372">according to Aviation Week</a>.</span></p>
<p>In October, the French planemaker began working to speed up production of the A350s, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-ramping-up-production-a350-production-2012-10">putting $15 billion into an assembly factory</a> in Toulouse, France. Boeing has sped up its assembly process as well, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-boeing-produces-777s-2013-1">now building eight new planes each week</a>.</p>
<p>But the outcome of the investigation into the lithium-ion battery that powers Boeing's grounded Dreamliner could become a setback for Airbus, which plans to use lithium-ion batteries in the A350.</p>
<p>That investigation is moving forward slowly. Japanese officials have determined a fire in one jet was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-dreamliner-battery-problems-caused-by-uncontrollable-overheating-2013-2">caused by a build up of heat</a>, called thermal runaway, which badly damaged the lithium-ion battery. The cause of the high temperature is still unknown.</p>
<p>"Airbus will carefully study recommendations that come out of the 787 investigation and evaluate whether they apply to the A350," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-warned-airlines-about-dreamliner-battery-2013-1">Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said</a> in January.</p>

Airbus Lands A Big Order For Its New A350 XWB Plane

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55b111732acae76e098b7eb6-985-554/452b_artistconcept_beautyshot.jpg" alt="kepler" data-mce-source="NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle" data-link="http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723">NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle</a></span></p><p class="caption">Artist's illustration of Kepler 452b.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Today, a team of NASA scientists hit a new milestone in the 20-year hunt for a planets outside our solar system by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-just-discovered-an-earth-like-planet-2015-7">finding a world more like Earth than anything we've ever seen before</a>. </p><p>Their momentous discovery points to a planet outside of our solar system about 1,400 light years from Earth. They're calling it Kepler 452b.</p><p>This amazing find comes with the tantalizing question: Does this planet currently have life or did it at some point in the past?</p><p>Right now, scientists don't have powerful enough instruments to answer this burning question. However, there are qualities about this newly-found planet that are extremely exciting. </p><h3><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">For starters, it orbits around a single star that is very similar to our sun. </strong></h3><p>Stars come in many different sizes and temperatures. There are giant stars, which can be tens of thousands of times larger than our sun, which are relatively short lived and explode when they die. These stars are not a likely place to search for life. On the other end of the spectrum are stars that are very small and cool - and which will outlive our sun by billions of years - that might not give off enough energy for an Earth-like planet to reach temperatures that would allow it to harbor liquid water.</p><p>Kepler 452b's star, however, is in the same family of stars as our sun. It's basically an older cousin of our sun.</p><p>Here's a chart that shows how much energy Kepler 452b is receiving from its star compared to Earth. It gets about 10% more sunlight than we do:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55b12bd369beddf177f8c78c-985-724/fig8-a_window_into_time.jpg" alt="nasa" data-mce-source="Matthew Stuart" /><p class="source"><span>Matthew Stuart</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3><strong>This brings us to the next intriguing quality of Kepler 452b: Its orbit.</strong></h3><p>This exoplanet is located at just the right distance - about 93 million miles - from its star to harbor liquid water on its surface. NASA can't say whether there <em>is</em> water on the surface, but just that there is a sweet spot around every star, called the habitable zone, where a planet will receive enough sunlight, but not too much, for water to exist in its liquid state.</p><p>And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that where there's water there's the potential for life. </p><p>Here's where Kepler 452b is in it's orbit compared to Earth and other exoplanets. Note that the chart doesn't show the actual distance from the planet's star, but instead how much energy the planet gets from sunlight. (If the star were a small, dim one, then the habitable zone would be closer to the star to absorb enough thermal energy.) The green band below highlights the habitable zone:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55b137ef2acae732118b92eb-985-738/kepler-452b-and-earth.png" alt="kepler 452b and earth" data-mce-source="NASA" data-link="http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723">NASA</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>But water isn't the only thing you need for life. You also need time - millions and billions of years' worth. </h3><p>Scientists suspect that the first life forms on Earth were spawned between 3.5 and 3.8 billion years ago. That means planet Earth was a desolate place for its first 200 to 500 million years. And humans didn't arrive on the scene until just 200,000 years ago.</p><p>The team can estimate the age of Kepler 452b by calculating the age of its star. They report that this star is about 6 billion years old - that's 1.5 billion years older than Earth and our sun. Which leads to the exciting conclusion by Jon Jenkins, the Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center who lead the study:</p><p>"It's simply awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star, which is longer than the age of the Earth," Jenkins said. "That's considerable time and opportunity for life to arise somewhere on the surface ... should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life on this planet [exist]."</p><h3><strong>And then there's the size of the planet to consider. </strong></h3><p>Large planets, like Jupiter and Saturn and most of the exoplanets known today, have no rocky surface to speak of. They're just giant balls of gaseous atmosphere. From what we've seen and from what we understand about planet formation, you have to be small to have a solid surface.That's not a problem for Kepler 452b.</p><p>The team measured Kepler 452b's size at about 60% larger than Earth's. So, Kepler 452b is still very small as planets go and, therefore, likely a rocky planet instead of a gaseous one. That's good news since we tend to think that life on other planets will need something to stand on - unless there are flying aliens eluding our detection in Jupiter's skies.</p><p>This illustration compares the relative size of Kepler 452b to Earth:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55b141bb2acae719008b960b-4534-2550/452b_artistconcept_comparisonwithearth.jpg" alt="452b_artistconcept_comparisonwithearth" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle" /><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3><strong>A rocky surface isn't the only benefit to Kepler's size, though. </strong></h3><p>As stars like our sun and Kepler 452b's sun age, they tend to get hotter. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/specials/washington_2000/649913.stm">Some planetary scientists think</a> that within about a billion years, our sun will get hot enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth that will result in the evaporation of our oceans evaporating, signaling the end of life on our home world.</p><p>However, even though Kepler 452b and its star are a billion years older than we are, the newly discovered world might be in better shape. As NASA states in a release regarding the latest results:</p><p>"Since it is 60% bigger than Earth, it is likely to be approximately five Earth masses, which provides additional protection from the runaway greenhouse effect for another 500 million years."</p><p>To put this into perspective, if Earth were the same size as Kepler 452b, we would likely have at least a couple hundred million more years before we had to worry about catastrophic solar-evolution induced global warming. That of course doesn't leave us off the hook for our own, more modest but still potentially disastrous, impact on Earth's climate.</p><h3>While all of these qualities weigh substantially in Kepler 452b's favor for having life either now or some time in the past, t's not necessarily the most likely place we'll find life.</h3><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55a143296bb3f77432b03670-2300-1700/pia19048_realistic_color_europa_mosaic.jpg" alt="Europa" data-mce-source="NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech / SETI Institute" data-link="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#/media/File:PIA19048_realistic_color_Europa_mosaic.jpg" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#/media/File:PIA19048_realistic_color_Europa_mosaic.jpg">NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech / SETI Institute</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The one thing we really need to know first is if there's water on its surface. Unfortunately, as remarkable as the Kepler telescope has been at finding far away worlds, we will have to wait for at least <a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/science.html">the next generation of space telescopes</a>, and possibly decades longer than that, before we have the ability to spot water on planets in other solar systems like Kepler 452b.</p><p>Meanwhile, there are places in our own solar system which almost certainly harbor large quantities of liquid water: Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.</p><p>Both of these are believed to have vast, deep oceans underneath their outer icy surfaces. The life that could be swimming in these oceans would have to be able to survive under pretty extreme conditions, but scientists like Steve Vance, who is a member of the Europa mission <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, thinks that there definitely could be something down there:</p><p>"My modest thought about what kind of life might be at Europa involves the kinds of things that we see at heads of thermal vents [on Earth], mainly microorganisms," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/types-of-alien-life-on-europa-2015-2">Vance told Business Insider earlier this year</a>.</p><p>And there's always the possibility that we'll find microbial life hidden deep beneath he surface of Mars.</p><p>One thing is clear: In the race to discover the first alien life, astrobiologists just got a major new contender.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-looks-like-if-earths-ice-melted-animated-map-2015-4">Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Z4dGwzdDrnZunZUB10-CqEUToYnAvsHw" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'Z4dGwzdDrnZunZUB10-CqEUToYnAvsHw',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Why NASA's latest discovery of Earth 2.0 is so important in the search for life on other planets

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:399px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/513f96e46bb3f7b62f000028-902-676/boeing-787-dreamliner-7.jpg?maxX=399&amp;maxY=299" border="0" alt="boeing 787 dreamliner" width="399" height="299" /></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ist4u/6809457674/sizes/l/in/photostream/">flickr / INABA Tomoaki</a></p></div>The Federal Aviation Administration has approved <keyword id="6357957" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Boeing">Boeing</keyword>'s certification plan for the redesigned 787 <keyword id="85416" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dreamliner">Dreamliner</keyword> battery system, it announced this afternoon.</p>
<p>That plan includes changes to the aircraft's battery system, which short-circuited and started a fire onboard a parked Dreamliner in Boston, in January.</p>
<p>The battery's cells will be better insulated, and the unit will be surrounded by a new containment system, with improved ventilation to disperse possible smoke.</p>
<p>In a statement this afternoon, Boeing described its solutions as "comprehensive."</p>
<p>Boeing <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-proposes-dreamliner-battery-fix-2013-2">presented the changes to the FAA</a> on February 22. The <keyword id="137685" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="FAA">FAA</keyword>'s approval begins a process to evaluate the safety of the 787 before it returns to commercial service.</p>
<p>The jet must pass a series of tests, and the FAA's emergency airworthiness directive, which grounded the fleet of Dreamliners on January 16, will remain in effect until it does so.</p>
<p>The FAA has also approved limited test fights for two Dreamliners.</p>
<p>FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta came across as optimistic in the FAA statement:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We are confident the plan we approved today includes all the right elements to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the battery system redesign. Today’s announcement starts a testing process which will demonstrate whether the proposed fix will work as designed.</p>
<p>But <keyword id="34991" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="transportation">Transportation</keyword> Secretary Ray LaHood emphasized that safety, not Boeing's profit margin, is the key concern:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">This comprehensive series of tests will show us whether the proposed battery improvements will work as designed. We won’t allow the plane to return to service unless we’re satisfied that the new design ensures the safety of the aircraft and its passengers.</p>
<p>Even if the Boeing proposals get through the testing process, they don't go to the root cause of the problems with the batteries. </p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-dreamliner-investigation-reveals-battery-damage-2013-3">ongoing NTSB investigation</a> has found that a short circuit in one cell cascaded to the seven others, leading to a thermal runaway: uncontrollable heat and the battery's failure. Why it short circuited, or how to prevent further incidents, is unclear.</p>
<p>Ray Conner, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, explained the changes in a statement:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Our proposal includes three layers of improvements. First, we've improved design features of the battery to prevent faults from occurring and to isolate any that do.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Second, we've enhanced production, operating and testing processes to ensure the highest levels of quality and performance of the battery and its components.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Third, in the unlikely event of a battery failure, we've introduced a new enclosure system that will keep any level of battery overheating from affecting the airplane or being noticed by passengers.</p>

FAA Approves Testing Of Boeing's Dreamliner Battery Fix

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b58cd11a592a51e008b45dd-1165/screen shot 2018-07-25 at 30829 pm.png" border="0" alt="Martin Tripp Tesla Badge" data-mce-source="Business Insider" /><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Martin Tripp</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul><li><strong>On Tuesday Martin Tripp, a former employee at Tesla's Gigafactory, filed a countersuit against the company. He alleges that Tesla is not living up to its mission to improve the environment, and instead is generating "large quantities of waste and 'scrap' vehicle parts lying haphazardly on the ground inside the Gigafactory."</strong></li><li><strong>Tesla sued Tripp in June after Tripp leaked internal documents to Business Insider. </strong></li><li><strong>Tesla also alleged that Tripp hacked into the company's manufacturing operating system, systematically transferred data off its network to third parties, and made false claims to the media regarding waste and quality issues at the company, all of which Tripp denies. </strong></li><li><strong>Tripp now alleges that Tesla made false statements about him around the time of the lawsuit.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Martin Tripp, a former process server at Tesla who says he made $28 an hour, filed a countersuit against the company on Tuesday. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp, 40, alleges that Tesla is not living up to its mission to improve the environment, and instead is generating "large quantities of waste and 'scrap' vehicle parts lying haphazardly on the ground inside the Gigafactory," according to the counterclaim.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp also alleges that Tesla consistently reused battery parts that had been discarded as waste. His filing states he "was even told by one colleague that the colleague, after seeing damaged products being reused, intentionally further damaged the parts to prevent them from being used in a Model 3."</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">More allegations from Tripp's counterclaim:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-weight: 400;">"In mid-May 2018, [Tesla's] Manufacturing Operating System ("MOS") showed that from January 1, 2018 to mid-May 2018, approximately $150,000,000 to $200,000,000 worth of battery module parts, including bandoliers and battery cells, had been categorized as 'Scrap.'"</span></li><li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp also claims that punctured battery cells were reworked with glue and put back on the manufacturing line. "Based upon information and belief, no quality inspections were performed on these 'reworked' battery modules before they were returned to the manufacturing processing line. Mr. Tripp personally observed technicians perform this process on several battery modules."</span></li><li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp claims that Tesla discontinued vehicle part tracking systems. "As a result, traceability is unknown for many vehicle-parts and/or materials which could have a drastic effect on determining where the part(s) were made, when, and by whom."</span></li><li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp denies allegations that he hacked into Tesla's manufacturing operating system (MOS).</span></li><li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tesla allegedly "published these false and defamatory statements out of malice and to retaliate against" Tripp and "discredit him before the general public."</span></li></ul><p>Earlier, Tripp leaked internal documents and other information<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-scrap-waste-high-gigafactory-2018-5"> to Business Insider.</a></p><p>A former self-proclaimed Tesla fanboy, Tripp claims that he tried bringing his concerns to his superiors and Tesla CEO Elon Musk first, but nothing came of it.</p><p>Now Tripp is being sued by Tesla for allegedly "hack[ing] the company's confidential and trade secret information and transfer[ring] that information to third parties." <span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/tesla-says-it-got-call-that-ex-employee-martin-tripp-threatened-violence.html">Tesla also claimed</a> it received a tip from a "friend" of Tripp's, who suggested Tripp might try to "shoot up" the Gigafactory. Law enforcement looked into it at the time and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-receives-threat-shoot-factory-friend-sacked-employee-989601">found no credible threat.</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tripp denies any violent intentions in his counterclaim and says Tesla declined to reveal the name of the "friend" who gave it the tip. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></p><p>"Tesla has used strong-arm tactics and a defamatory smear campaign in an effort to bury the disconcerting information Martin Tripp learned as a Tesla employee and to discredit Mr. Tripp before the general public," Tripp's attorney, Robert D. Mitchell of Tiffany and Boscoe said in a statement to Business Insider.</p><p>"By filing its lawsuit against Mr. Tripp, Tesla has now forced the issues to the forefront, and Mr. Tripp looks forward to defending himself before a jury of his peers by showing that what he witnessed and repeatedly reported at Tesla is, in fact, true."</p><p>Tesla did not respond to requests for comment for this story.</p><h1>What may happen when Tesla wants to sue you</h1><p>Tripp's legal troubles with Tesla began on June 14 and 15, when the company's security team called him into meetings for questioning. </p><p>He tells Business Insider the first meeting lasted about six or seven hours. Tripp claims Tesla's team wanted to know how he allegedly ran queries into their manufacturing operating system (MOS), such as about Tesla's scrap waste and part prices, and why he'd do that. </p><p>Tripp says he told Tesla that he felt CEO Elon Musk was misleading investors about production numbers, and that Tesla's security personnel laughed in response.</p><p>Tripp then says he took Tesla's team to an area where non-conforming battery parts were lying about. Some of those batteries were destined for rework, and he explained his fears about hurriedly-reworked batteries going into "thermal runaway," a condition in which an overheating battery begins to destroy itself. </p><p>When the meeting ended, Tripp says he was escorted out by security, at which point he said he found his car surrounded by further security in the Tesla parking lot.</p><p>Tesla security wouldn't leave until a truck came to escort Tripp out, he claims. The incident left him with the impression that he'd been let go from the company.</p><p>He was not.</p><p>The next day, Tripp says Tesla's security team called him back for more questioning and then put him on "administrative leave." </p><p>Tripp recalls the second meeting with Tesla being shorter and less cordial than the first. Tesla's team asked similar questions and then started to ask stranger ones, Tripp claims. They wanted to know how he had allegedly managed to put a program into the MOS that ran queries into the system at the same time every day, searching for scrap costs.</p><p>According to Tripp, the security team told him <span style="background-color: #ffffff;">they knew he had logged into nine </span>computers,<span style="background-color: #ffffff;"> and had the program running from three of them.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Tesla did not respond to request for comment on the meetings. In Tesla's complaint, Tesla alleges that in the meetings, Tripp admitted to writing software that hacked Tesla's MOS and to transferring "several gigabytes of confidential and proprietary Tesla data . . . ".   </span>Tripp denies these accusations in his filing.  He told Business Insider he doesn't even know how to code.</p><p>"This ordeal, which, inter alia, implied that Mr. Tripp was a danger to those around him, was highly embarrassing and distressing to Mr. Tripp," Tripp claims in the filing.</p><p>Later, Elon Musk wrote in a company-wide email that Tesla had a "saboteur" on its hands. Shortly after that, Tesla <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sues-employee-elon-musk-said-committed-sabotage-2018-6?r=UK&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed a lawsuit against Tripp</a>.</p><p>In a now-public email exchange between Tripp and Musk, the Tesla CEO called Tripp a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-email-exchange-with-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp-2018-6">"horrible human being."</a></p><p>The company alleges that Tripp stole confidential data and exaggerated the numbers in that data to the media. Tesla also alleged that Tripp hacked into its MOS.</p><p>Tripp says his safety was jeopardized in the weeks that followed.</p><p>"Since his employment with [Tesla] ended, Mr. Tripp has received numerous threats to his personal safety, which, upon information and belief, have been stirred by the foregoing false and defamatory statements published about him by [Tesla]," the counterclaim alleges.  It continues, "Mr. Tripp has even been followed and trailed on multiple occasions by unidentified individuals."</p><h1>Claims and Rumors </h1><p>Rumors have flown around Tesla's factories about Tripp and the "saboteur."</p><p>An engineer<strong> </strong>at the Fremont factory told Business Insider that the engineers thought it was crazy that any such "saboteur" could exist at all. In their opinion, this person would have to have been a professional hacker.</p><p>"The MOS configuration...gets overwritten daily with an automatic push from a stash repository," this person explained. "All changes on said stash are trackable and require approval from other members."</p><p>He added: "Pushing malicious software onto other people's computers would not be possible without their authorization unless [the person were] a professional hacker. To which then I would say, 'Why is [Tripp] working as a process technician?'"</p><p>In his counterclaim, Tripp maintains that the information he sent to Business Insider was accurate.</p><p>All of this comes at a critical time for Tesla. Analysts at Goldman Sachs say the <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tesla-stock-price-tesla-will-need-10-billion-in-fresh-cash-before-2020-goldman-sachs-says-2018-5-1024848274" target="_blank" rel="noopener">company may have to raise money</a> soon to maintain a comfortable cash position as it tries to scale its new Model 3 sedan amid production delays.</p><p>The company reports its second quarter earnings on Wednesday.</p><p><em>Disclaimer: The author of this article is specifically named in the counterclaim, where Tripp alleges that statements Musk made on Twitter to @lopezlinette are false and defamatory.</em></p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Tesla stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/TSLA-Quote"> <strong>here.</strong></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-features-coming-to-the-iphone-in-ios-12-this-fall-2018-7">Top 9 features coming to the iPhone in iOS 12</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/ku0fJjCX-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

The ex-Tesla employee Elon Musk called a 'horrible human being' just slapped the company with a countersuit alleging defamation

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf20f4b996eb1d008b47a2-2400/waste-isolation-pilot-plant-wipp-ap_924492318823.jpg" alt="waste isolation pilot plant wipp AP_924492318823" data-mce-source="Associated Press" data-mce-caption="A worker drives a cart through a tunnel inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant No. 2, 150 feet below the surface near Carlsbad, New Mexico." data-link="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nuke-Repository-Settlement/99723aaac9ca418b84df0b6a11810248/30/0" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nuke-Repository-Settlement/99723aaac9ca418b84df0b6a11810248/30/0">Associated Press</a></span></p><p class="caption">A worker drives a cart through a tunnel inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant No. 2, 150 feet below the surface near Carlsbad, New Mexico.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>A typo and a bag of organic kitty litter may end up costing United States taxpayers more than $2 billion in nuclear waste cleanup, according to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html">a new report by Ralph Vartabedian at the Los Angeles Times</a>.</p><p>Back in February 2014, a drum of nuclear waste burst open inside the cavernous <a href="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/recovery.html">Waste Isolation Pilot Project</a> (WIPP), which is drilled out of a salt deposit nearly half a mile below the deserts of Carlsbad, New Mexico.</p><p>The US Department of Energy (DOE), which funds the company that runs the nuclear waste dump, quickly suspended operations and launched an investigation to figure out the cause.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf26ec09d293ce178b469a-900/drum-68660-wipp-doe-labeled.jpg" alt="drum 68660 wipp doe labeled" data-mce-source="DOE/WIPP" data-mce-caption="Drum 68660, which burst in WIPP nuclear waste dump." data-link="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html">DOE/WIPP</a></span></p><p class="caption">Drum 68660, which burst in WIPP nuclear waste dump.</p></div><p></p></div></div>In their <a href="http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/03/f20/MARCH%202015%20-%20FINAL%20TECHNICAL%20ASSESSMENT%20TEAM%20REPORT.pdf">277-page report</a>, investigators determined the blast vaporized nearly 7.5 lbs of the material inside a single barrel, labeled "<a href="http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/03/f20/TAT_Fact_sheet%2032615%20FINAL.pdf">Drum 68660</a>." That material included some radioactive isotopes of americium, plutonium, and uranium - byproducts of Cold War-era nuclear weapons production.</p><p>Although no one was inside WIPP when the drum burst, the facility's air ventilation system spread some of the gases outside, exposing 21 workers to low doses of radiation.</p><p>Investigators also discovered the trigger of the "thermal runaway event," also known as an "explosion": <strong>a dangerous combination of nitric acid and salts, triethanolamine, and <a href="http://www.swheatscoop.com/">"sWheat Scoop" organic kitty litter</a></strong>. (The DOE mentions the brand almost 400 times in its report.)</p><p>The cleanup itself will cost hundreds of millions, but that's not where the mishap's ledger ends.</p><h2>A radioactive kitty litter 'bomb'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf2153b996eb96008b47a9-2166/waste-isolation-pilot-plant-wipp-radioactive-waste-barrels-drums-doe.jpg" alt="waste isolation pilot plant wipp radioactive waste barrels drums doe" data-mce-source="DOE/WIPP" data-mce-caption="Workers wrap up drums of nuclear waste." /><p class="source"><span>DOE/WIPP</span></p><p class="caption">Workers wrap up drums of nuclear waste.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The "organic" part of the kitty litter in question is crucial.</p><p>That's because wheat, which makes up the pee-absorbing bulk of <em>organic</em> kitty litter, contains plant cellulose that can burn. Standard kitty litter, meanwhile, is <em>in</em>organic, since it's primarily made of clay.</p><p>So when drum-packing workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) followed instructions to add an organic variety to soak up radioactive fluids, they were unknowingly packing up what Sarah Zhang at Gizmodo called "<a href="http://gizmodo.com/how-a-simple-typo-may-have-turned-a-drum-of-radioactive-1662683094/1694070960">the ingredients of a bomb</a>."</p><p>Why did they use fancy organic kitty litter instead of plain old clay kitty litter?</p><p>According to <a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/special_reports/from_lanl_to_leak/lanl-officials-downplayed-waste-s-dangers-even-after-leak/article_54d7f3d2-8c99-5793-8c17-c4bdb0b72ef1.html">a Nov. 2014 story by Patrick Malone at the Sante Fe New Mexican</a>, which we first learned about in Gizmodo's detailing of events, it was likely the most common and mundane of human errors - a typo:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Even before the waste was treated at Los Alamos, mistakes had been made that could have been instrumental in causing the accident at WIPP. Emails between WIPP contractors involved in the leak investigation indicate that <strong>something as simple as a typographical error in a revision of LANL's procedural manual for processing waste containing nitrate salts may have precipitated a switch from inorganic clay kitty litter to the organic variety</strong>."</p><p>A <a href="http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/10/f18/DOE-IG-0922.pdf">Sept. 2014 report released by the DOE</a> appears to back this up, stating "handwritten notes that called for an organic absorbent to process nitrate salt drums were improperly relied upon to revise the Procedure".</p><h2>Expanding cleanup costs</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf220309d293ce178b468b-2400/wipp-cleanup-workers-doe.jpg" alt="wipp cleanup workers doe" data-mce-source="DOE/WIPP" data-link="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html">DOE/WIPP</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Whether handwritten or typed, that error is going to be costly.</p><p>According to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html">Vartabedian at the LA Times</a>, the cleanup costs directly related to Drum 68660 will be about $640 million, per <a href="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/foia/NWP_M&amp;OContract/NWP_Mod_152.pdf">a July 2016 contract modification</a> with the Nuclear Waste Partnership (the company that runs WIPP for the DOE).</p><p>Further, he wrote, this "does not include the complete replacement of the contaminated ventilation system or any future costs of operating the mine longer than originally planned."</p><p>The DOE disputed that cost figure with Business Insider, saying direct cleanup costs will be about $244 million - not $640 million.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="DOE/WIPP" title_caption="A cutaway diagram of the WIPP facility." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf7165b996ebef008b49d7-960/wipp-explosion-location-air-shafts.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57bf7165b996ebef008b49d7-1200/wipp-explosion-location-air-shafts.jpg" alt="wipp explosion location air shafts" data-mce-source="DOE/WIPP" data-link="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/WIPPCommunityRelations/plan.html" /></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.wipp.energy.gov/WIPPCommunityRelations/plan.html">DOE/WIPP</a></span></p><p class="caption">A cutaway diagram of the WIPP facility.</p></div><p></p></div></div>That extra $400 million, it says, comes from a new air ventilation system for WIPP, which may cost between $270 million and $400 million. But the DOE could not confirm by the time this post was published whether or not that (very expensive) project's approval had anything to do with the mishap.</p><p>Whatever the case, WIPP isn't entombing any nuclear waste while cleanup work continues - which means the US government's grand scheme to seal it all up has a major wrench in its gears.</p><p>The Times reports the facility may need 7 years of additional operation to handle the backup of waste. At $200 million per year, according to the Times' analysis, <strong>that could add up to $1.4 billion in extra costs triggered by the mishap</strong>.</p><p>The DOE did not immediately dispute that length of time, but said it anticipates WIPP could resume taking in new drums of waste sometime in 2017.</p><p>In the meantime, the DOE might also have to pay temporary storage and inspection costs for all of the waste that WIPP can't entomb until the cleanup work is finished. The DOE couldn't confirm or deny this, nor the cost.</p><p>"The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is critical to the Department of Energy's mission to cleanup nuclear waste generated by atomic energy activities," a DOE spokesperson told Business Insider in an email. "WIPP is the nation's only repository for the disposal of nuclear waste known as transuranic (TRU) waste. The Department is committed to the recovery, and resumption of TRU disposal operations at WIPP when it is safe to do so."</p><p>Business Insider has reached out to sWheat Scoop for comment and will update this post if we hear back.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/norwegian-reindeer-radioactive-from-chernobyl-2016-4">Reindeer are strangely radioactive 30 years after Chernobyl</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="04c3I0MzE6dzApUmGcjwihsdjq199QFo" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '04c3I0MzE6dzApUmGcjwihsdjq199QFo',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

A typo and a bag of kitty litter might cost US taxpayers billions in nuclear waste cleanup

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b58cef40ce5f51f008b45c5-1115/screen shot 2018-07-25 at 32546 pm.png" border="0" alt="Tesla Balan prototype" data-mce-source="Business Insider" data-mce-caption="Balan with a prototype of the electrochromatic windshield she designed in 2013." /><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Balan with a prototype of the electrochromatic windshield she designed in 2013.</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul><li><strong>Martin Tripp, the former <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tesla</a> employee being sued by the company, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-martin-tripp-files-countersuit-2018-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has filed counterclaims</a> including allegations Tesla tried to intimidate him after he spoke out about waste, quality and safety issues.</strong></li><li><span></span><span><strong>Another former Tesla employee, Cristina Balan, told Business Insider the </strong></span><span><strong>company silenced her and seven other employees on her team who<span></span> voiced concern over waste and quality internally.</strong></span></li><li><strong>Tesla ignored repeated requests for comment on this story.</strong></li><li><span></span><span><strong>At a 2014 meeting, she and Tesla's interior design team voiced concerns about the quality and safety of some of Tesla's parts. </strong></span><span></span><span><strong>She claims these concerns were ignored by Tesla, and that she was then pushed out of the company. </strong></span></li><li><span></span><span><strong>After being fired she then initiated an arbitration with Tesla claiming whistleblower status and alleging discrimination and retaliation.</strong> </span></li></ul><hr /><p>In early August, a former Tesla process technician, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-martin-tripp-files-countersuit-2018-7">Martin Tripp, counter-sued the company. </a></p><p>Tripp claims Tesla, which filed a lawsuit against him in June, falsely accused him of hacking into the company's operating system. He also alleges Tesla waged a smear campaign against him in order to silence his claims of poor part quality and waste at the company.</p><p>For another former Tesla employee, Cristina Balan, Tripp's story feels familiar. </p><p>Balan began working for Tesla as an engineer in 2010. In a series of interviews with Business Insider, Balan said she was pushed out of Tesla four years later.</p><p>Balan says this happened shortly after she and her seven-member interiors team shared concerns about poor part quality<span> and waste they observed on the job with their superiors. Balan sued Tesla alleging discrimination, retaliation, and other issues. A multi-year arbitration ensued.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Business Insider reviewed emails, testimonies, text messages and other information from Balan's tangle with Tesla. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Here's how a once-celebrated Tesla engineer - who used to work on top secret projects for Tesla's top brass and whose initials were actually carved onto the battery of the Model S - says she wound up on the wrong side of the company. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">It could be a cautionary tale for what Martin Tripp is about to face.</span></p><h2><span style="background-color: #ffffff;"><span>A Saturday venting session spirals: 'I feel like a sheep in a slaughterhouse'</span></span></h2><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">In March 2014, Balan and her interiors team had brewing concerns about Tesla. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">They worried about design flaws in the cars and felt their concerns were being overlooked or mishandled by managers. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;"> According to internal emails and testimony from the arbitration, Balan's team had every intention of taking their issues straight to Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Musk had, after all, told employees that Tesla was not a hierarchical company. They should feel free to approach him whenever they deemed it necessary.</span></p><p>Before she scheduled a meeting with Musk, though, Balan reached out to one of the heads of her department, Chris Porritt, who was Tesla's VP of Vehicle Engineering. Porritt asked to meet with Balan and the team about their concerns.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b4d22607b67141f008b4bb6-894/porritt wants to meet.png" border="0" alt="Porritt wants to meet Tesla" data-mce-source="Business Insider" /><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>They met with him on a Saturday for a meeting that lasted around 2 hours.</p><p><span>There, they described an aggressive, high-pressure atmosphere. </span><span>They also described a version of business-as-usual at Tesla that was full of part defects, opaque relationships with suppliers and waste.</span> </p><p>The engineers said they felt frustrated because they believed their immediate bosses may have been shielding them from contacting suppliers. This made it difficult for the interiors team to finish projects thoroughly and correct design flaws.</p><p>Balan said she suspected this bottleneck was really just a way for her bosses to hide mistakes. For instance, her concern about the so-called "rat hole" - a gap she had found in the design of the Model S's roof headliner that separated the roof from the rest of the car - had been met with what Balan saw as clear resistance from her managers.</p><p>Tesla, she claimed, ultimately stuffed a piece of styrofoam in the gap of the $100,000 car to fix it. And while the DIY-sounding solution didn't present a safety issue, Balan said it did create a rattling noise in some of the vehicles, which customers later complained about. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b745d6b2be4ab1a008b52ea-777/screen shot 2018-08-15 at 10320 pm.png" border="0" alt="rat hole tesla" data-mce-source="Business Insider" data-mce-caption="This is where the rat-hole would be." /><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Where the "rat-hole" would be, according to Balan.</p></div><p></p></div></div>At the Saturday meeting, members of the group shared instances when they felt their attempts to fix faulty Tesla car parts were thwarted by management. </p><p>One engineer said he had wanted to fix a problem with the Model S's driver's seat floor mat since 2012. <span>As designed, the floor mat could potentially interfere with the brake, the engineer claimed. </span></p><p><span>But when he tried to investigate the issue with the supplier, his managers stopped him and either demanded to take over or asked him to focus on something else, he said.</span></p><p>The engineer told the group that the still-unfixed floor mats were a safety issue, even as Tesla had tens of thousands of cars on the road. Porritt agreed. Porritt also lamented that the company would potentially have to scrap $90,000 worth of defective parts. </p><p>Tesla ignored repeated requests for comment on this exchange.</p><p>Porritt agreed with just about everything the team said during that long Saturday meeting. <span>He listened when the employees complained about being allegedly bullied by managers. He thanked them for meeting and said that what was happening on their team was certainly not "the Tesla way."  He also said the team could trust him and he promised to help find a solution.</span></p><p><span>Instead, in the following days, the team members were pulled into meetings with their bosses and pressured to recant their statements, according to text messages, emails, and arbitration documents seen by Business Insider. </span></p><p><span>"I feel like a sheep in a slaughterhouse," one engineer wrote in a text to teammates.</span></p><p>Another engineer who attended the meeting later testified that he felt pressured to deny his attendance at the meeting with Porritt and any complaints about the team's superiors. He said he felt that if he didn't, he might lose his job and claimed the rest of the team felt the same way.</p><h2>Balan's Final Days</h2><p>Tesla handled Cristina Balan differently from her colleagues.</p><p><span>In emails dated April 2nd, 2014, her managers and a member of Tesla's HR team discussed how to deal with her going forward and, according to emails viewed by Business Insider, they did not see much of a future for her at Tesla.</span></p><p>Balan understood she had become an increasing headache to her immediate superiors with whom she constantly clashed, so <span>superiors and HR discussed a plan to either coach her or determine other paths for her, according to an email.</span></p><p><span>They decided to check in with Balan about her health rather than any work performance issues. She had expressed concern about it to a superior months before, and had health issues during her first stint at Tesla. Then they would decide the best way forward, according to their correspondence.</span></p><p>"If for any reason we are unable to substantiate the health issue, we will need to then set a different plan of action," Tesla's HR wrote in the email to Balan's managers and Porritt. </p><p>Tesla ignored repeated requests for comment on this email exchange.</p><p>Balan ultimately left Tesla on April 16th, 2014, less than a week after Tesla's counsel told her via email that she was the only person on her team who "accused" her managers "of wasteful spending and the covering up that wasteful spending."</p><p>"You were the only one who made the accusation to Chris," Tesla's counsel said in an email. "You were the only one who made such an accusation to HR. Thus there is no reason for me to speak to the others who complained to Chris..."</p><p>Balan said it felt as if Tesla wanted to go on as if the Saturday meeting with Porritt never happened, and none of her colleagues had ever spoken up at the company. </p><h2>Electric culture shock</h2><p>In the arbitration<strong> </strong>that followed her departure, Tesla claimed that Balan resigned in 2014 because she didn't get along with her bosses and couldn't get work done.</p><p>Tesla's lawyers argued that she complained often and was only concerned with her own designs.</p><p><span>A former colleague familiar with the situation who felt Balan was a "creative," capable engineer, also said she was overly excitable and too intense.</span></p><p>But Balan maintains a belief that her resignation was prompted by a campaign to "push her out of Tesla" after she and her team complained about quality issues with cars.</p><p><span>Balan said she believes that even in the subsequent arbitration, Tesla found ways to continue to discredit and silence her.</span></p><p><span>Balan recorded conversations with her colleagues while at Tesla, but the former San Francisco Superior Court judge who presided over the arbitration would not allow any of them to be used in the case. </span></p><p>The arbitrator found that Tesla underpaid Balan by misclassifying her as an employee below her talent level. But he did not find that there had been any gender discrimination or that Balan was a whistleblower.</p><p>The defects she was concerned about, like the "rat hole," were simply not a safety risk to the arbitrator, and Tesla's witnesses also denied that the defects were severe.</p><p>Balan said she was offered to settle with Tesla "seven or eight times" and the money she was offered would have allowed her to stop working for at least a decade. But Tesla wanted Balan to sign away her right to speak about her experience, which she found troubling, so she never agreed.</p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"We are living in an era of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence," Balan told Business Insider. "We cannot afford to have engineers on that level being afraid to speak u</span>p [when they see mistakes]<span style="font-weight: 400;">. We cannot afford this."</span></p><h2><strong>Two Teslas. Same Tripp.</strong></h2><p>To Balan, her story is a tale of two Teslas. </p><p>During her first stint at the company, Balan worked in the battery department. There, she said everything was about pushing creativity and innovation, and saving every penny the fledgling company could find.</p><p>But her experience on the interiors team felt different.</p><p>"As<span style="font-weight: 400;"> soon as the Model S came out the door and Elon realized how cool he'd become, everything went down the drain," she said. </span></p><p>She said she feels Tesla went from a scrappy startup with high integrity to one engulfed by Silicon Valley hype.</p><p>When a company becomes<em> the</em> hot company to work for and rich with funding, the type of people who flock to work can change. Priorities sometimes change. And culture can change too.  </p><p>"The reason Tesla is what it is is because it transformed from a company of innovation to a company of sales," Balan said. "<span style="font-weight: 400;">The only thing they care about is how many cars they come up with per week. It doesn't matter what the quality is."</span></p><p>This opinion is perhaps why Balan saw so much of her story in Martin Tripp, the former technician who is now counter-suing Tesla.</p><p>Like Balan, Tripp is trying to claim whistleblower status after he pointed out perceived issues with Tesla's production process to Business Insider.</p><p>He claims in his filing that the quality of Tesla's battery manufacturing is low - to the point of dangerous - and that he fears batteries could overheat and go into thermal runaway. He also claims that Tesla's production process is so wasteful that it's not living up to its environmental mission.</p><p>Also like Balan, he claims that now the company is trying to intimidate him into silence. </p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"I think they are just too full of themselves," Balan said of Tripp's situation. "They think Tesla can get away with everything. </span>And it worked - up until now."</p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Tesla stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/TSLA-Quote"> <strong>here.</strong></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-misconception-about-global-trade-deficits-with-china-costco-2018-7">How a Wall Street chief strategist's Costco shopping experience explains the biggest misconception about global trade</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/fFl05QGb-xjRU7l6Z.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

You Searched For "thermal runaway" and got 9 results

Boeing May Follow Elon Musk's Advice To Fix The Dreamliner's Battery

Alex Davies

Boeing's Dreamliners Could Be Flying Again Within A Month

Alex Davies

Airbus Lands A Big Order For Its New A350 XWB Plane

Alex Davies

Why NASA's latest discovery of Earth 2.0 is so important in the search for life on other planets

Jessica Orwig,Andy Kiersz

FAA Approves Testing Of Boeing's Dreamliner Battery Fix

Alex Davies

The ex-Tesla employee Elon Musk called a 'horrible human being' just slapped the company with a countersuit alleging defamation

Linette Lopez

A typo and a bag of kitty litter might cost US taxpayers billions in nuclear waste cleanup

Dave Mosher

A former Tesla engineer says the company silenced her entire team after they brought up safety and quality issues

Linette Lopez

A forgotten war technology could safely power Earth for millions of years. Here's why we aren't using it

Dave Mosher