Climate Changed
Tesla Learned About Dyson’s Secret Car Plans Two Years Early
- Engineer told Tesla lawyer about plans after getting job offer
- Dyson won injunction delaying move to the rival company
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When Dyson Ltd. started developing an electric car -- a radical departure for a company known for vacuums and hand dryers -- executives knew it would be tough to keep the plan under wraps. But what they didn’t know was that an engineer who they had picked for a small and highly secretive group to work on it already had a job offer from Tesla Inc.
Court documents dating back to 2015, and published for the first time Monday, reveal the story of how a 30-year-old engineer, Pierre Pellerey, told Tesla about Dyson’s electric car more than two years before it was made public, kicking off months of legal battles.