Tesla whistleblower complaint about solar fires is part of evidence in federal safety investigation

A U.S. federal agency is considering as evidence a former Tesla employee's complaint about how the company managed and communicated about fire risks and defects in its solar installations, CNBC has learned from documents received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is proceeding with an investigation and has also interviewed the former Tesla employee who filed the complaint in spring 2019, Steven Henkes, who was then a Tesla solar field quality manager.

CNBC learned of the investigation by asking the CPSC for a full copy of the whistleblower complaint. The agency declined to provide the full complaint but revealed: "The records that we are withholding are related to an open investigation, and consist of internal and external reports." The precise scope and focus of the investigation are not known at this time.

In a lawsuit filed in Alameda County in November 2020, Henkes said that he was fired from his job at Tesla on Aug. 3, 2020, after raising safety concerns internally then filing formal complaints with government offices, when Tesla failed to act to fix and communicate accurately with customers over what he said were unacceptable fire risks in the company's solar installations.

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