By: Diane Benjamin
This is a copy of the lawsuit Tesla filed against Rivian and 4 of their employees:
From the lawsuit – who Tesla is suing:
Now watch the video. It describes what each of the above did and why they are being sued. The video is interrupted numerous times for commercials that you can skip. It isn’t very long, but it raises a bunch of questions. You can draw your own conclusions.
This is the description by the video author:
It is nice to see that the warning signs that I saw from the beginning with this company were valid. Now we have a company that is in serious legal trouble and just lost the trust of their present investors and supporters.
The question is: Will ANYONE in our media here ask RJ Scaringe to explain why his company stole from Tesla?
This is REALLY Bad!
First, this doesn’t say much for Tesla’s computer and information security system but that’s a topic for another day. Anyone that has followed Rivian from the start knew that the leadership had little to no knowledge how to manufacture any type of vehicle. They were going to have to raid employees from another manufacture to be able to build vehicles of any type. These guys have moved from any location to anywhere that was willing to give them a handout. When you listen to R.J. in any type of a public forum you can tell his automotive acumen is lacking. It is not surprising they would be willing to recruit and employ people of low ethical standards since they are so needing in automotive knowledge. They are here only because they were able to play local leadership and will dump on them at the first opportunity to get a better deal. Don’t tell me their recent build on’s is proof of their local long term commitment. They are doing it with investor money, not theirs. What is most ridiculous is this has been in the public purview for close to a month and not a mention on any local media that I know of let alone the Pantagraph. I am sure the Pantagraph has been told to lay low on this by editors so as not to piss off Rivian and Koos who might shut them down for future information. This should be the story of the year locally but instead you get crickets. What a joke we have become.
This is crazy! While I presume all are innocent until proven otherwise, the evidence is quite concerning, to say the least. RJ has in my opinion has marketed himself as a visionary and innovative thinker, yet aside from owning a car company (for ten years) that hasn’t produced a single (non-prototype) car, I don’t see anything in the way of a resume to support such claims. What’s more, he and the company shy away from public appearances unless they have more-or-less in complete control over the setting, content, attendees, and/or media. I’ve been suspicious of them from the start, but I hope I’m proven wrong in the end. Investor money is probably the most overhyped and non-sensical indicator of a startup company’s success or potential success. This, of course, is what the local cheerleaders point to as evidence of success. The local media won’t cover it because they don’t want to lose the Koos press mill, one of their favorite and only sources of content. (Always nice to have someone else write your stories for you.) If this story or some chatter about the lawsuit makes it on a popular local Facebook page or two and gains some views, I can all but guarantee a glowing fluff piece in the Slantagraph.
I think we waiting and see if any investors dry up. That would be a sure sign this is real.
I would think that investor eyebrows are raising in alarm right now?
It’s real alright. The more likely scenario would be a buyout by Amazon who would partner with another automaker to insure their vans get built. Never forget that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos despise each other. The Amazon investment in Rivian has always been about eventually getting their hands on the battery technology for eventual use in satellites. He is getting his tail kicked by Musk in space ventures and it is likely driving him insane.
I agree that the Rivian investment by Amazon was more of a shot at Elon Musk and an effort to get into battery technology than it was an endorsement of Rivian itself. I’ve often wondered if Amazon would convince the other investors to drop Rivian like a bad habit and take it over. This news of alleged wrongdoing and reports of already low volumes of preorders might get some investors acting squirrelly. Just saying.
The real question is this…
Where did the creator(s) of this video “steal” the video segments from?
Rivian
Tesla
Both?
The interwebs?
A lot is in the lawsuit
ANYONE who THINKS that RIVIAN is going to come out with an electric wheelchair or such, I would like to meet, as they have a BETTER chance of getting struck by a meteorite, in which case I’d like to purchase it from them.
Although Bloomington DID have a meteorite fall on Howard street back in the 30’s, it’s in the John Deere Planetarium in the Quad Cities and basically NOT for sale.
It DOES however have an interesting story behind it!
As for Rivian. NOT much of a story there!
Rivian really don’t need HR document’s like compensations, salaries or how to hire personnel , Rivian already have all of that, it’s not a new company , Rivian have employees, Software Engineers, Mechanical Engineers , CFO ,
ext… with benefits, salarys and compensation plan a long time ago. You really think that 170+ employees left Tesla to work for Rivian, assuming according to Tesla lawsuit that they do not have a plan to pay their employees. Don’t let yourself be deceived in a dirty war of who will be the best EV company, remember that Tesla so far has no competition and it seems that the first competition will be Rivian.
See the related lawsuit, roe Hunter v Rivian, orange county superior Court, or email [email protected] for copy of the lawsuit.
So Tesla, who in the not so distant past, engaged in a high profile recruiting war with Apple is now upset that Rivian is hiring it’s employees? Interesting.
There’s nothing in this video that implicates Rivian for theft of trade secrets. At MOST it seems that some of Rivians former Tesla employees engaged in illegal activities. That’s not exactly a slam dunk against Rivian. Also, Rivian has hundreds of employees from numerous tech companies and the only “crooked” ones worked at Tesla. Is there a common cultural factor? Did these employees learn to “take their work with them” when they worked at Tesla?
Finally, I don’t see any evidence that Tesla technology made its way into Rivian vehicles. Two Rivian trucks just drove 13,000 miles from South America to LA without any issues. If they were based on Tesla technology they would have lost several bumpers due to rain, gathered dozens of pounds of dirt in manufacturing pockets, suffered from delaminated glass, and had at least one central display break at the worst possible time.
This is all worth investigating, but in no way implicates Rivian in any wrong doing.
“There’s nothing in this video that implicates Rivian for theft of trade secrets” Really? Did you watch some other video?
Upon watching the video and seeing the REAL evidence of the orchestrated by Rivian theft by new hires to Rivian of proprietary information and then reading the lawsuit document who make anyone with a functioning brain think that Rivian is in some deep legal s##t.
Completely fake by Tesla, they have sued whenever they found competition. Fisker automotive, Mercedez Benz and now rivian.. its there strategy to keep others busy in legal battle. Elon musk is pussy and coward.
Ya, a pussy that can put people in space and reuse rocket boosters. All these people involved are arrogant but at least Musk’s operations have a workable history. We’ll see what the great J.R. can do in the next ten years and see if he can produce dependable vehicles that don’t need fixing after 50,000 miles and are affordably priced. His niche market strategy will only last so long. One thing J.R. has proven is that he can’t be trusted and can’t stand behind commitments made to any community. The Koosites want this to work out so bad they are almost going in their pants.
This was funded by Tesla. If you look at the job titles of the 4 in question which one could have had information? And hiring manager? A field recruiter? A health a safety manager? And a manager of the supercharging network. So one had access to tech docs for the supercharging network. The others don’t even have technical background. So they stole technical information? This is a bogus claim by Tesla which the company does frequently. I love Tesla but come on, grow up.
You are correct they funded their legal team to put together a lawsuit against the 4 (now Rivian) employees and Rivian because the have REAL evidence of
Case No. 20CV368472 COMPLAINT FOR INJUNCTIVE
RELIEF AND DAMAGES FOR:
1. VIOLATION 0F THE UNIFORM
TRADE SECRETS ACT (CAL.
CIV. CODE 3426 ETSEQ);
2. BREACH 0F CONTRACT; AND
3. INTENTIONAL INTERFERENCE WITH CONTRACT.
FYI – no matter how much you wish for it… this is not going away.
Ask anyone who knows how vehicles are manufactured and they will tell you Rivian was already stealing body concepts from Ford trucks. Scaringe’s history tells anyone paying attention he is short on delivering and long writing checks he can’t cash. Everyone that got so excited about his investors know the total money’s he raised is a drop in the bucket for an auto manufacturer looking to stay in business long term. His vehicles have yet to be proven a dependable commodity over the long haul and his Dolorean strategy of cornering a niche market is short- sighted at best. Just listening to the guy does not fill you with alot of confidence. Ten to twenty years down the road will tell the tale of the locals got scammed again or not.
That video was just plain stupid. All he did was talk about the lawsuit. I did not see one little shred of evidence that backs the story up. What a waste of my time!
I bet you spent some time as a child with your eyes held tightly closed , with your hands over your ears while loudly repeating NA NA NA NA….?