- Corporate politics may have played a role in the dismissal of a Jaguar Land Rover engineer, per the BBC
- The same engineer published concerns about the safety of the VinFast VF 8 via a reddit AMA
- He says his whistle-blowing on that website led to his being fired at JLR and subsequently blacklisted
In a new twist to the story over at VinFast, the Vietnamese automaker moving into the EV space at light-speed, an engineer who lost favour with the company after raising safety concerns about suspension components told the BBC his whistle-blowing via a reddit AMA got him sacked at his job with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), and then black-listed by several manufacturers.
Hazar Denli, a mechanical engineer, was allegedly fired from his job at Tata Group-owned JLR after he raised concerns on reddit about the safety of some vehicles he’d worked on at VinFast, which has contracted with Tata on automotive development. The BBC cites confidential emails it’s seen as proof of retaliatory action taken against Denli by top brass at Tata after he posted his concerns on a reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) where he said he felt lives were being put at risk by VinFast corner-cutting.
According to the story, Denli – working for Tata but contracted out by that company to work on VinFast VF 8 vehicle development – initially raised his concerns internally, within VinFast, after test-driving prototypes whose suspension parts were not up to snuff. Some parts allegedly snapped clean off at low mileages under specific circumstances. “We saw, for example, the front strut-to-knuckle connection was loosening, which could be extremely dangerous,” the BBC quotes Denli.
“It could cause a loosening of the entire structure that could cause wheels to come off. In a crash scenario, it could be completely unsafe.”
These experiences apparently happened after Denli was appointed in September 2022 to lead the engineering team tasked with sorting out the VF 8’s front suspension, a job which was already underway when he arrived. Equipment failures are said to have started happening a few short months later, incidents he reported to colleagues. More problems are said to have occurred in subsequent testing.
Denli says he recommended a suspension redesign, but was rebuffed because of cost and timeline concerns. He went on to quit the project in May 2023, apparently being the fourth person to do so, and then took on work at JLR. After reading of a crash in California involving a VF 8 which may have been precipitated by suspension failure, Denli posted his thoughts about the vehicle’s safety to reddit in an AMA. Not long after, he was forced out of JLR.
Alert readers may recall some car-news outlets expressing concern about the ride and handling of the VinFast vehicles they sampled, with one going so far as to allege the VF 8 suspension induced nausea in its test crew while another described the same model as having “the worst body control of any modern car I’ve ever driven.” Learning the car may have – allegedly! – improperly designed components in the suspension system might further furnish those remarks.
Neither JLR nor Tata Group offered to give any comment to the BBC regarding its coverage of Denli’s allegations.
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