Rather than comply, Tesla dropped the case. The judge ordered Tesla to enter the videos into evidence. When Tesla pressed for a permanent restraining order, Hothi told the judge that the Tesla car’s cameras could show exactly what did and didn’t happen that day. Tesla claimed Hothi stalked, harassed and endangered the car’s occupants, then sought and won a temporary restraining order in court. Her lawsuit against the company is testing the limits of the arbitration agreements that bind millions of American workers.Ī few months after the factory incident, Hothi was out driving and came across a Tesla-owned vehicle with mounted cameras that Hothi assumed would be used for a video that would show off the car’s self-driving abilities. Her fight could be a milestone for employees’ rightsįormer engineer says Tesla forced her out and then libeled her. Although Tesla has been selling a $15,000 feature it calls Full Self-Driving, no Tesla, nor any commercially available car, can drive itself - not even around the block, much less across the continent.īusiness Tesla called her a criminal. Musk had claimed in 2016 that a Tesla would be able to drive itself with no human intervention from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. He regarded Musk’s claims that his Autopilot system would soon develop into a “full self-driving” robot car as fantastical. The “alien dreadnaught” wasn’t the only source of Hothi’s skepticism. What happened physically is unclear, but after Tesla showed video footage of the encounter to local law enforcement and tried to have Hothi arrested, police and prosecutors told Tesla they found no cause. As Hothi pulled out of the parking lot, the guard was standing near the side of his car. Hothi said he was going to the showroom but complied with the order. The lot is publicly accessible, and the site included a Tesla retail sales showroom that the public was invited to visit.Ī guard intercepted Hothi and told him to leave. The trouble started in February 2019, after Hothi pulled his car into the Tesla factory lot and parked. But Musk pulled it off - it may have been built in a tent, but the Model 3 proved popular, and, by Musk’s own admission, the company narrowly escaped bankruptcy in 2018, and was still struggling with production when Hothi was ejected from the parking lot. Tesla stock was under great pressure at the time from short sellers who were betting the company was about to fail. Hothi turned out to be right - Musk’s aggressive automation attempt was an embarrassing flop and Tesla ended up assembling Model 3s in a hastily erected tent outside the factory walls. He was skeptical that Musk could pull off promises of manufacturing the new Model 3 in a factory so automated and so devoid of humans it would resemble an “alien dreadnaught.” The factory’s security force had recorded his license plate number and guards had orders to kick him out if they saw him nosing around. He was unpopular among Tesla executives, particularly Musk. (At the time, Hothi held a short position in Tesla stock.) Using the handle he was popular with a group of short sellers and other Tesla critics known as #TeslaQ. The who-is-Hothi part is a bit more complicated: A graduate student at the University of Michigan but living in the Bay Area in early 2019, Hothi began monitoring auto production from outside Tesla’s Fremont factory, and posting his findings on Twitter.
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