A new report reveals a safety incident at one of Tesla’s manufacturing plants in 2021.
A malfunctioning robot at Tesla’s Giga factory near Austin left one of the company’s engineers wounded after the automated machine immobilized the worker on the factory floor and clawed at his back and arm, according to an incident report filed with federal regulators and reviewed by the Daily Mail.
The automated machine, which was designed to assemble freshly cast aluminum parts, reportedly left an “open wound” on the engineer’s left hand and a “trail of blood” as the machine’s metal claws dug into the worker’s back and arm, the Daily Mail reports.
The incident may have been worse if not for a colleague who rushed over and pressed the emergency stop button, giving the engineer time to break free and move a safe distance away. However, eyewitnesses reportedly told The Information that the victim actually fell a couple of feet down a chute meant for collecting scrap metal after getting free from the robot.
Tesla must submit all incident reports to local authorities to stay eligible for tax incentives in Texas. However, while no other injuries were reported at Giga Texas in 2021 or 2022, the actual number of safety accidents is likely “underreported,” according to Hannah Alexander, an attorney with the nonprofit Workers Defense Project.
“My advice would be to read that report with a grain of salt,” Alexander told the Daily Mail. “We’ve had multiple workers who were injured, and one worker who died, whose injuries or death are not in these reports that Tesla is supposed to be accurately completing and submitting to the county in order to get tax incentives.”
According to Tesla, the engineer’s injuries were not life-threatening and did not require him to take any time off work.
The Dallas Express reached out to Alexander for a statement on the subject but did not hear back by the time of publishing.