Driven to Distraction - Whistleblowing on a potential Tesla design flaw

Date of Publication: 19th May 2025

BBC News recently published an online article about Christina Balan, a former Tesla engineer. Balan is fighting to clear her name after raising safety concerns about a potential design flaw in Tesla’s Model S Vehicles. She identified a critical issue in 2014, warning that carpets in the vehicle could curl beneath the pedals and affect breaking, an issue she claimed had also been reported by customers.

Shortly after voicing these concerns, Balan lost her job at the company and subsequently won a wrongful dismissal case. She was later publicly accused by Tesla of misusing company resources for a so called ‘secret project'.

Balan is reported to have consistently denied any wrongdoing and has taken legal action to dispute the allegations. She is waiting to present her case fully in open court.

Balan is currently in remission following treatment for stage- 3B breast cancer. She is concerned that she may not live to see the resolution of her legal battle, for which her primary motivation is to clear her name for the sake of her young son.

We consider what Cristina Balan says and analyse her words.

Speaking about her son, she said, ‘I’m his hero, I’m the mommy who does airplanes and cars. ‘I want to clear my name. I wish Elon Musk had the decency to apologise’.

‘Everything went south when I realised that they were hiding some critical safety issues’.

Ms Balan was worried that the carpets were curling underneath some pedals – a simple but potentially lethal design flaw - and said customers had complained.

‘If you cannot push the brake, someone else, outside of a Tesla, can get injured, they just had to say, we realise the carpets are bad - just take them out of the cars’.

‘I emailed him (Elon Musk) two emails, I sent him one before I was out [of Tesla], telling him that we are all threatened. I was thinking in my head, he still wants to do what’s right for Tesla’.

‘I don’t want to give up my career and I know that if I’m not winning this, it doesn’t matter how good I am. Everybody will look at what Tesla say about [me], so my career is gone. I do not want that’.

In applying Forensic Statement and Linguistic Analysis to Ms Balan’s Statement, we observe the following:

1. She consistently uses first person singular pronouns which typically support credibility. Deceptive individuals often distance themselves by omitting the pronoun ‘I.’

2. Her narrative follows a clear past tense progression when discussing prior events.

3. Her present concerns appropriately shift to the present tense, reflecting temporal awareness which is a trait of truthfulness.

4. Emotional and personal language is prominent which is not always typical of deceptive narratives.

5. Balan includes specific quotes which can suggest an episodic memory. This is a marker of genuine experience.

6. She avoids the use of qualifiers, hedging language and excessive explanations, indicating confidence in her version of events. There is little need to convince.

7. She uses a logical narrative flow and chronology.

8. There are no major temporal gaps or jumps which can signal deception.

9. The emotional content is congruent with context.

Conclusion

All of the above are strong linguistic cues of truthfulness and the account is likely credible and grounded in genuine experience.

We were unable to find any reference to Balan denying misusing company resources for a so called ‘secret project.’ She does not deny it here.

Reference & Photo Credit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3q95ednqwo

All blog subjects are identified, validated and written by the DDL Team.

See www.ddlltd.com for more on Deception Detection Lab Ltd.