
The ORIONEWS has seen proof the multinational company that owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) organized for a whistleblower to be sacked for elevating considerations concerning the security of electrical automobiles it designed.
Confidential emails between executives at Tata Group reveal they retaliated in opposition to mechanical engineer Hazar Denli for posting considerations on Reddit that lives have been being put in danger. He was then blacklisted.
US authorities at the moment are investigating an earlier mannequin of the identical automotive after 28 reviews of security defects and a crash during which a family-of-four have been killed.
In response to an in depth proper of reply letter from the ORIONEWS, each JLR and Tata Group declined to remark.
Mr Denli, from Milton Keynes, first raised considerations internally whereas working at a unique division of Tata Group, its international engineering consultancy Tata Applied sciences.
He advised the ORIONEWS that in test-driving prototypes, designed by Tata Applied sciences for Vietnamese automotive maker Vinfast, he recognized improperly designed elements within the automotive’s chassis, together with its suspension system.
At low mileages, a few of them have been snapping off, he stated.
That created a danger that beneath stress, equivalent to hitting a pothole at pace, the wheels may grow to be misaligned, inflicting the automotive to veer to the left or proper with out prompting, and the motive force may lose management, Mr Denli added.
“We noticed, for instance, the entrance strut-to-knuckle connection was loosening, which could possibly be extraordinarily harmful,” he stated. “It may trigger a loosening of all the construction that would trigger wheels to return off.
“In a crash situation, it could possibly be utterly unsafe. It may trigger the car to lose management.”

‘Alarm bells’
Mr Denli, a specialist in chassis design, was appointed to steer the engineering staff engaged on the automotive’s entrance suspension and chassis from September 2022, midway by way of a design and testing section he says had an unusually tight timetable.
He quickly turned involved VinFast was chopping corners with security, preserving prices down by using a small staff of inexperienced engineers.
His considerations grew when he heard three of his predecessors had give up after brief spells on the undertaking.
He says in February and March 2023, whereas working vigorous testing on VinFast automobiles on the Mira Know-how Park close to Nuneaton, two elements snapped off and one other two failed.
He reported the “extraordinarily regarding” incidents to colleagues at Tata Applied sciences Restricted (TTL), the consultancy’s UK division, based mostly in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
In subsequent testing, he alleges additional elements failed.
Mr Denli stated they have been failing after fewer than 25,000 km (15,534 miles), when usually they’d be anticipated to final for not less than 150,000 km (93,205 miles).
“Within the drive items, a number of the brackets have been utterly failing and falling out on to the street,” he stated. “We’re speaking one or two kilograms price of aluminium.
“These [incidents] began inflicting alarm bells to go off simply a short while earlier than we we went into manufacturing.”
He escalated his considerations to senior executives at TTL and VinFast and stated he had beneficial they redesign the defective elements and manufacture safer, greater high quality components.
That will have sharply boosted prices and required VinFast Group to postpone manufacturing of the automotive, he added.
However VinFast, which was getting ready to promote shares in itself and lift funds by floating on the New York Inventory Change, as an alternative pushed forward with manufacturing.
Mr Denli requested Tata Applied sciences to reassign him to a different undertaking however senior managers refused.
Sad to be related to the VinFast automotive, he says, in Might final yr he resigned.
Together with his expertise as a marketing consultant engineer in demand, Mr Denli later discovered new work by way of an company at JLR in Gaydon, additionally owned by the Tata Group.
However he stated he stored seeing reviews on-line showing to point out severe security defects in earlier fashions of the identical VinFast automotive – together with a video that appeared to point out a automotive reversing with no driver in it – and crashed automobiles the place the wheels had come off.
In one other report, a VinFast automotive at a showroom in Germany caught fireplace.
The identical elements he was testing in VinFast’s VF6 and VF7 fashions had been carried over from two earlier fashions already on sale in the USA, Vietnam and Europe – the VF8 and VF9.
Then on 24 April this yr, a family-of-four was killed in a crash in Pleasanton, California. Police reported the car misplaced management, veered off the street, hit a pole and caught fireplace.
The next month, US security regulator the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration (NHTSA), introduced it was reviewing the VinFast VF8. VinFast stated it was cooperating with the investigation.
The reviews of the crash prompted Mr Denli to publish the posts on a Reddit account saying he had labored on the design of the automotive and it was a car he believed endangered lives.
“I might get into each different car I’ve designed from different manufacturers… and each car has flaws… However Vinfast, I would not get into one… by no means will and I will not let my family members get into one both,” he wrote.
Two months later, on 18 July this yr, Mr Denli’s contract at JLR was terminated.

Inside paperwork obtained by way of a Information Topic Entry Request (DSAR) reveal a senior govt at his former employer Tata Applied sciences had been in contact with JLR executives to hunt his dismissal.
After he noticed the Reddit posts, Tata Applied sciences HR director Patrick Flood mentioned his firm’s want to have Mr Denli’s new employment terminated with JLR’s HR director and board member Dave Williams.
Mr Flood advised Mr Williams that Tata Group’s consumer VinFast had carried out its personal investigation and recognized Mr Denli because the creator of the Reddit posts: “The priority is that if he has achieved this now, he may do the identical at JLR.”
The identical day he was sacked, Mr Denli was blacklisted on trade recruitment platform Magnit, which advised JLR he had been “red-flagged” so any functions from him for different work by way of the platform can be mechanically declined.
On 19 July, Mr Flood emailed JLR company investigators: “I simply wished to verify whether or not the person’s providers have been terminated with JLR?” The investigator confirmed they’d.
The interior paperwork present one other Tata Applied sciences engineer had additionally advised JLR there have been issues with elements Mr Denli had warned about on Reddit.
Mr Denli stated his bosses at JLR knew he had achieved nothing flawed in his JLR employment and advised him he had been dismissed as a result of Tata Group was embarrassed by his postings about its consumer, VinFast.
He’s now taking JLR to an employment tribunal.
“I used to be distressed as to what was taking place all over the world the place harmless individuals have been paying the worth – a really excessive value,” he stated.
“I believed that if some individuals would begin to communicate up about it, they’d truly be compelled to make some adjustments. Sadly, their response was to not make these enhancements, however, ‘Hey, who stated this? Let’s go and shut him up’.”
On 12 September, the NHTSA launched an investigation into the Vinfast VF8.
It introduced it was wanting into 3,118 VinFast autos offered within the US after 14 drivers reported the Lane Maintain Help programs have been flawed in VF8 automobiles purchased in 2023 and 2024.
The NHTSA stated the drivers reported the system “has issue detecting lanes on the roadway, gives improper steering inputs and is tough to override by the motive force”.
VinFast stated it will cooperate totally with the NHTSA all through this course of.
“We take all security considerations severely and can proceed to watch the state of affairs intently,” VinFast advised Reuters, expressing the corporate’s confidence in its security requirements.
The variety of reviews of questions of safety obtained by the NHTSA has now grown to twenty-eight.

Parliamentary invoice to assist whistleblowers
In UK employment legislation, staff have some safety from employer retaliation in the event that they disclose data they moderately imagine exhibits the well being and security of any particular person is prone to be endangered.
Beneath the Public Curiosity Disclosure at Work Act 1998, any clause in a contract that seeks to bind them to silence is void.
Nevertheless, there may be rising stress in Parliament for stronger safeguards for whistleblowers amid considerations current protections are too weak.
A invoice will probably be launched on Wednesday proposing to arrange an Workplace of the Whistleblower to guard staff who communicate up.
Supporters equivalent to Baroness Susan Kramer, a former transport minister, says Mr Denli’s case isn’t distinctive and underlines why the invoice is required.
“Whistleblowers very usually discover themselves fired, blacklisted for future jobs they usually pay an enormous value by way of their private profession,” she stated.
“It isn’t acceptable, as a result of we’d like whistleblowers to discourage wrongdoing and to reveal wrongdoing.”
Georgina Halford-Corridor, chief govt of Whistleblowers UK, stated: “This story is one in every of tons of we hear yearly from whistleblowers who’ve been rewarded for doing the precise factor with retaliation.
“At present whistleblowers must resolve between talking up and their private wellbeing. The very best incentive that MPs can ship is to make sure whistleblowers are correctly protected and that wrongdoing will probably be investigated.”
The ORIONEWS supplied each Tata Group and JLR the chance to remark intimately.
Tata Group, the multinational company that owns JLR, didn’t reply.
JLR stated it didn’t touch upon ongoing authorized proceedings.
VinFast stated: “We don’t intrude within the recruitment or HR actions of the Tata Group or its firms. We’ve got no additional touch upon the matter.”
