A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car drop-off location in Norway, severely burning his hands and avoiding a disaster, he received an email from Elon Musk.
“Congratulations on saving the day!” Tesla CEO Musk wrote in March 2019.
But what began as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has turned into an epic battle between the automaker and Mr. Krupski, a service technician. The fight has sparked lawsuits in Norway and the United States and drawn the attention of regulators in several countries.
After initially being hailed as a savior, 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. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a team that helped prepare Teslas for buyers, but became so frustrated with the company that last year he turned over a trove of data from the automaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.
The data contained lists of Tesla employees, including 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 a basis for stories about flaws in the company’s Autopilot driver assistance software.
The data also provided the basis for Handelsblatt stories and Wired Magazine about the problems Tesla was having manufacturing the Cybertruck pickup truck, which the company says will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years late. (Some of the information came from a second unidentified Tesla employee.)
Krupski said he had gained access to sensitive data simply by 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 Data Protection Authority of the Netherlands, where Tesla has its European headquarters, is investigating whether the breach violated privacy laws. A spokeswoman for the authority confirmed that she 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 worker, sued the automaker in federal court in California, alleging that Tesla’s lack of security exposed employee information that could be sold to criminals. Mr. Pai’s lawyers are seeking a judge’s approval to bring the case as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of Tesla employees.
Krupski shared the data with Aaron Greenspan, a prominent Tesla critic and short seller, who urged him to provide the information he had collected on Autopilot to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. has conducted long-running research into the software, which can drive, accelerate and stop a car on its own, but requires the driver to be ready to take control at any time. The agency has interviewed Mr. Krupski several times, he said, an indication that his information was taken seriously.
Greenspan said he had begun closing his short positions in Tesla shortly after hearing from Krupski.
The US safety agency confirmed it is investigating whether Autopilot played a role in hundreds of crashes, some fatal, but declined to comment on any interaction with Krupski. Tesla has maintained that Autopilot makes cars safer and recently prevailed against a lawsuit that claimed the software was responsible for a fatal crash in California.
Krupski and Greenspan also wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission raising questions about Tesla’s accounting practices, based in part on data Krupski had collected. He said he did not know what the commission had done with the information.
The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Krupski remained anonymous until spoke officially with Handelsblatt last week.
In the interview with The Times, Krupski, 38, said he was unemployed and had exhausted his savings. He has formally notified Tesla that he intends to sue for compensation, but he cannot proceed with the case until he raises enough money to pay a lawyer. Unlike lawyers in the United States, lawyers in Norway are not allowed to work on commission, taking a portion of any 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 Krupski, who had been hired only a few months earlier, was part of a team called in at short notice to prepare Teslas for delivery to customers in Norway, where the Electric vehicles account for more than 80 percent of new car sales.
Tesla, which sells cars directly to buyers, was using showroom space near Oslo to deliver vehicles. Thousands of people visited a car show in the same complex.
Around noon, a charging device that another employee had improperly modified caught fire under a Model 3 sedan. Krupski ripped out the device and, with his bare hands, removed wires, pipes and other components that were burning and melting. He used rags and towels to douse the flames.
“It’s fair to say that if it weren’t for his action, the result would have been a burning car,” Krupski’s manager wrote in an email to Musk the next day. Krupski said the fire could have spread, endangering workers and customers waiting nearby and forcing the evacuation of the auto show.
The only person seriously injured was Mr. Krupski, who was hospitalized with severe burns but recovered.
After Musk congratulated Krupski, the technician responded with complaints about safety practices at Tesla’s Norwegian operation. On the day of the fire, he wrote, there were no fire extinguishers, cardboard boxes and other flammable materials were strewn about, and employees were not informed about where they would work.
“Okay, let me know if there’s still anything we need to do,” Musk responded, according to a copy of the email included in legal documents prepared by Tingstad.
But Krupski’s direct communications with Tesla’s CEO didn’t sit well with his bosses in Norway. According to Krupski, his supervisor began questioning his performance and telling him that he had no future at Tesla.
“Simply put, I am being fired,” Krupski wrote to Musk in late April 2019, less than four weeks after the fire. Musk responded: “I can’t read emails unless they are critical to Tesla.” That was the end of his correspondence.
In the months that followed, Krupski said, his co-workers threatened and harassed him and exiled him to a basement. A co-worker threatened to stab him in the back with a screwdriver, he said. Krupski and other workers were laid off during the pandemic and missed work due to stress-related health issues. Then, in 2022, he was fired after being accused of bad behavior, poor time management, and being a negative influence.
His bosses also said Krupski had taken photographs at a Tesla facility in violation of company policy. He said he had taken photographs to document safety problems, which included the use of a rolling table that employees placed under a car when removing a battery. The table was designed to support a maximum of 500 kilograms (about 1,100 pounds), Krupski said, while the batteries weighed substantially more. If a table collapses, he said, workers could be seriously injured or killed.
In a letter to Krupski’s lawyer, a Norwegian law firm representing Tesla said the company would deny it was retaliated against. The letter accused Mr. Krupski of misappropriating company information and threatened to seek compensation from him.
Tesla obtained an injunction from a Norwegian court ordering Mr. Krupski not to distribute any further company information. The court also confiscated his laptop and handed it over to Tesla. The company notified employees about the data breach on August 18, about three months after learning that Handelsblatt had the information.
Information including work email addresses, compensation and Social Security numbers may have been leaked, Tesla told employees in an email, but said: “We have no evidence that any personal information or used in a way that could harm them.
Krupski said he had suffered depression, anxiety and insomnia as a result of his battle with Tesla, but was relieved to no longer remain anonymous.
“I feel like just by going public I have a new surge of energy,” he said. “I have the motivation that, okay, maybe I can start building my life again..”
Noam Scheiber contributed reports.
