Tesla sues EV rival Rivian

Fresh from the glory of its fourth straight profitable quarter and the confirmation of its Texas Gigafactory, Tesla has dropped a law suit on EV start-up Rivian.

In its suit filed last week Tesla claims a “disturbing pattern” of former employees recruited by Rivian taking confidential information and trade secrets to their new jobs.

Tesla even claims Rivian – which has engineering and manufacturing facilities across America – is “knowingly encouragingly” this behaviour.

Tesla is seeking unspecified punitive damages for what it alleges is “despicable, wanton, oppressive, willful, malicious, [and] duplicitous” behaviour.

Rivian is rejecting the claims.

“This suit’s allegations are baseless and run counter to Rivian’s culture, ethos and corporate policies,” it said in a statement.

“Upon joining Rivian, we require all employees to confirm that they have not, and will not, introduce former employers’ intellectual property into Rivian systems.”

In total there are reported to be 178 former Tesla employees among Rivian’s 2400 workforce.

The lawsuit names four specific former Tesla employees as defendants and details examples uncovered by Tesla’s investigative team of information theft. Tesla says it has also identified other former employees who allegedly stole confidential information.

In a somewhat dystopian revelation, the lawsuit revealed the Tesla investigative team had “recently acquired sophisticated electronic security monitoring tools”.

Two of the defendants, Tami Pascale and Kim Wong, were recruiters at Tesla until recently.

It claims they downloaded critical documents about mass recruiting for production and sales as well as important payscale documents before leaving.

While Rivian is yet to bring a vehicle to market it is probably the most convincing of the EV start-ups that have followed in Tesla’s wake.

In the last 18 months it has has raised more than US$5 billion ($7 billion) in capital from blue chip backers including Amazon, Ford and Blackrock.

It is scheduled to launch its R1T battery electric pick-up truck in early 2021, followed by the R1S SUV.

Rivian sees Australia as a key market for the large EVs.

Tesla has also recently sued self-driving start-up Zoox and a former employee for allegedly taking Autopilot source coding to Chinese EV start-up Xpeng.

Tesla’s mission is to “accelerate the transition to electric vehicles”. In its early days Tesla was unfussed about rivals joining the electric car race, arguing it was good for the world.

Perhaps the pressure of being the world’s most valuable car maker is mounting.