https://www.reddit.com/r/VinFastComm/comments/1hgxh9p/this_is_huge_tata_engineer_revealed_that_vinfast/
The BBC has seen evidence the multinational corporation that owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) arranged for a whistleblower to be sacked for raising concerns about the safety of electric cars it designed.
Confidential emails between executives at Tata Group reveal they retaliated against mechanical engineer Hazar Denli for posting concerns on Reddit that lives were being put at risk. He was then blacklisted.
US authorities are now investigating an earlier model of the same car after 28 reports of safety defects and a crash in which a family-of-four were killed.
In response to a detailed right of reply letter from the BBC, both JLR and Tata Group declined to comment.
Mr Denli, from Milton Keynes, first raised concerns internally while working at a different division of Tata Group, its global engineering consultancy Tata Technologies.
He told the BBC that in test-driving prototypes, designed by Tata Technologies for Vietnamese car maker Vinfast, he identified improperly designed components in the car's chassis, including its suspension system.
At low mileages, some of them were snapping off, he said.
That created a risk that under stress, such as hitting a pothole at speed, the wheels could become misaligned, causing the car to veer to the left or right without prompting, and the driver could lose control, Mr Denli added.
"We saw, for example, the front strut-to-knuckle connection was loosening, which could be extremely dangerous," he said. "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. It could cause the vehicle to lose control."
Mr Denli, a specialist in chassis design, was appointed to lead the engineering team working on the car's front suspension and chassis from September 2022, halfway through a design and testing phase he says had an unusually tight timetable.
He soon became concerned VinFast was cutting corners with safety, keeping costs down by employing a small team of inexperienced engineers.
His concerns grew when he heard three of his predecessors had quit after short spells on the project.
He says in February and March 2023, while running vigorous testing on VinFast cars at the Mira Technology Park near Nuneaton, two components snapped off and another two failed.
He reported the "extremely concerning" incidents to colleagues at Tata Technologies Limited (TTL), the consultancy's UK division, based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
In subsequent testing, he alleges further components failed.
Mr Denli said they were failing after fewer than 25,000 km (15,534 miles), when normally they would be expected to last for at least 150,000 km (93,205 miles).