A Tesla whistleblower who has battled Elon Musk and his company through the courts for a decade tells BBC News she is still seeking a public apology.
No other interview about a tech giant has made me cry.
But towards the end of our Zoom call, when former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan dramatically removes her wig and tearfully tells me she has just finished breast-cancer treatment – and is now fighting, as a single mother, for both her life and her reputation, it’s impossible not to feel her emotion.
“I want to clear my name. I wish Elon Musk had the decency to apologise,” is her message to the company’s billionaire boss.
Ms Balan has been waiting a long time.
Until 2014, she was a rising star within the electric-car company in the US.
In tribute to her engineering expertise, Ms Balan’s initials were engraved into all early Tesla Model S batteries. And she proudly shows off a battery shell on camera.
Ms Balan recalls chatting to Mr Musk in the lunch queue at the staff canteen and says she was happy and successful – living her dream, after growing up in Romania with a lifelong passion for cars.
But after raising concerns about the safety of braking in Tesla vehicles, in 2014, she lost her job.
Ms Balan won a wrongful-dismissal case, reported in the US press, external.
But then, in a long media statement, Tesla claimed she had used company time and resources for a secret personal project, which it said was embezzlement – a crime in the US.
It is something Ms Balan strongly denies.
Tesla has never provided any details about the alleged incident, either to her or in public, she says.
The company also failed to respond to a BBC News request for information about it.
Ms Balan accuses Tesla of defamation.
And while she is currently in remission from stage-3B breast cancer, her biggest worry is she may not live to see her final day in court.
Ultimately, Ms Balan says, she has doggedly pursued the case for so long because she wants to prove her innocence to her son.
“I’m his hero,” she says.
“I’m the mommy who does airplanes and cars.”
And she does not want him to grow up believing his mother was a thief.
source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg3q95ednqwo
