Tesla Sues Rivian -
Tesla is currently suing electric car startup Rivian as well as four former employees for allegedly stealing trade secrets. Previous to this case, Tesla has sued other startups such as Xpeng and Zoox, of which they think have also stolen trade secrets. Tesla believes that the four former Tesla employees, who now work at Rivian, have stolen trade secrets from Tesla.
Tesla wrote in the lawsuit was filed in California this week - “Rivian is knowingly encouraging the misappropriation of Tesla’s trade secret, confidential, and proprietary information by Tesla employees that Rivian hires. In about the past week, Tesla has discovered disturbing pattern of employees who are departing for Rivian surreptitiously stealing Tesla trade secret, confidential, and proprietary information—information that is especially useful for startup electric vehicle company. And Rivian encourages those thefts even though Rivian is well aware of Tesla employees’ confidentiality obligations. In fact, 13 Rivian recruiters are from Tesla, and they themselves are still subject to Tesla’s confidentiality obligations.”
Tesla also claims to have proof that Rivian solicited the secrets from former Tesla employees via email. The lawsuit will hopefully uncover whether or not trade secrets were stolen, as well as likely force Rivian to pay a settlement if the court finds that they did in fact solicit and obtain secrets from former Tesla employees.
Tesla’s Biggest Accomplishments in Q2 -
Other than having their stock hit new highs, Tesla beat the odds and turned a profitable second quarter, and hit many milestones along the way. Tesla had huge growth in speeding up the installations of their revolutionary solar roof, tripling installations in Q2 compared to Q1.
Although the number of installations tripled, the overall volume of installations is low. One promising item is that it seems that Tesla has finally conquered the challenge of scaling the production and installation sides of their solar roof product.
