The lawsuit consumers launched against Tesla for capping the voltage in their car’s cells could have done quite some damage to the company. It accused the EV maker of 19 wrongdoings, and Tesla would have to answer about them in court. It would have to provide documents, reasons, testimonies, emails. A settlement avoided all that. Elon Musk then said that it was because Tesla would never “fight true claims.”
Weirdly, he said that almost two years after David Rasmussen filed his class-action against the company. If Tesla knew that what it did was wrong, why didn’t it fix that right after limiting the range and the charging speed of these vehicles? But it gets even weirder.
If Tesla decided to do what is right, why are 30 Model S owners still fighting Tesla in Norwegian courts for the same sort of compensation? They have asked the law firm CLP to sue Tesla due to the issues caused by the 2019.16.1 or 2019.16.2 updates. CLP went after Tesla at the conciliatory board on April 12, 2021. It is a legal requirement in Norway to start consumer disputes there, which is equivalent to small claims courts.
So far, it paid off: these 30 customers received 136,000 Norwegian kroner each on May 17. If Tesla knew it was wrong, it could have paid them. Instead, Tesla appealed the decision claiming it did not receive notice of the lawsuit. This is why it would have been condemned in a default judgment.
Tesla policy is never to give in to false claims, even if we would lose, and never to fight true claims, even if we would win.
These 136,000 Norwegian kroner are equivalent to $15,487 at the current exchange rate. That’s way more than the $625 each the affected American Model S owners may receive if they accept what the EV maker is willing to offer them.
Tesla may have made a deal with these American customers to hide the reasons for its updates. If that was the case, it needs to do the same with the Norwegian customers – the ones represented by CLP and those with the same issues that Bilklager is trying to gather. If the Norwegian courts obtain and reveal the documents that explain these updates, the language barrier should not be an issue to make them public in English as well.
For Cristina Balan, secrecy is why Tesla chose to make a deal with the American customers instead of going to court against them. Balan is a Romanian engineer that helped Tesla solve multiple issues with the Model S. So much so that the first battery pack cases have her initials printed on them as a thank you message from the company. Things got sour when she took something Musk used to say for granted.
Photo: Cristina Balan
The Tesla CEO once said people should go straight to him if they had anything to report. Balan discovered safety and quality issues with the Model S and sent Musk an email message. She said that she was then forced to resign. In an official response from Tesla to an article that interviewed her, the company said that she was a criminal. Balan was not hired ever again by any automotive company despite her qualifications.
“Tesla accused me of using company’s money without approval on personal projects – which is the pure definition of embezzlement – and of going and finding suppliers out of Tesla’s purchasing team. Everyone who reads that understands kickbacks. Yet, Tesla cannot produce any evidence, not even a receipt of one of the crimes they’ve accused me of.”
For a company that claims “never to give in to false claims,” taking Balan’s case to courts would help it expose the engineer. Yet, that was something Balan wanted, not Tesla. The company forced her into arbitration, which follows a non-disclosure procedure: what happens in arbitration remains in arbitration. Balan wanted to make the documents and emails that would prove that she’s innocent public.
Photo: Tesla
She then fought to take Tesla to regular courts. The company managed to bring her case back to arbitration, but a federal court ruled that there is no more need for non-disclosure. Tesla now wants to dismiss the case. With all that, Musk’s tweet makes things seem even worse for her.
“Tesla made those agreements with the customers so everything will be hidden from public eyes. I couldn’t believe that someone can be such a hypocrite, but I know first hand that one thing is what Musk says and another what Musk does… When he said that Tesla’s policy is to never give in to false claims and Tesla keeps fighting my defamation case, he told the entire world that my claims are false.”
Balan sued Tesla to clear her name. She is a “pro se,” which means he is suing Tesla alone, with no legal assistance, after losing confidence in the first ones that represented her.
“Three months before I sued Tesla, I sent Musk a letter. I presented him all the evidence for which Tesla’s lawyers asked me what I wanted: I told them clearly that I wanted them to take the defamatory article down and issue an apology or retraction. I’m still waiting.”
As unrelated as these three events may seem, they show that talk is cheap. Tesla did not act as if it stood for what is right for customers until very recently in the U.S. and keeps fighting them in Norway. It also failed to provide anything that proves that Balan did anything wrong. At this point, it should be evident that actions speak louder than words.
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