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 throng reveal they retaliated against mechanical engineer Hazar Denli for posting concerns on Reddit that lives were being put at uncertainty. 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 household-of-four were killed.

In response to a detailed correct of reply note from the BBC, both JLR and Tata throng declined to comment.

Mr Denli, from Milton Keynes, first raised concerns internally while working at a different division of Tata throng, 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 structure.

At low mileages, some of them were snapping off, he said.

That created a uncertainty that under stress, such as hitting a pothole at speed, the wheels could become misaligned, causing the car to veer to the left or correct without prompting, and the driver could misplace control, Mr Denli added.

“We saw, for example, the front strut-to-knuckle connection was loosening, which could be extremely risky,” he said. “It could factor a loosening of the entire structure that could factor wheels to arrive off.

“In a crash scenario, it could be completely unsafe. It could factor the vehicle to misplace control.”

Mr Denli, a specialist in chassis design, was appointed to navigator the engineering throng 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 tiny throng of inexperienced engineers.

His concerns grew when he heard three of his predecessors had quit after short spells on the assignment.

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).

“In the drive units, some of the brackets were completely failing and falling out on to the road,” he said. “We’re talking one or two kilograms worth of aluminium.

“These [incidents] started causing alarm bells to leave off just a short period before we we went into production.”

He escalated his concerns to elder executives at TTL and VinFast and recommended they redesign the faulty components and manufacture safer, higher standard parts.

That would have sharply boosted costs and required VinFast throng to postpone production of the car.

But VinFast, which was preparing to sell shares in itself and raise funds by floating on the recent York ownership trade, instead pushed ahead with production.

Mr Denli asked Tata Technologies to reassign him to another assignment but elder managers refused.

Unhappy to be associated with the VinFast car, he says, in May last year he resigned.

With his skills as a consultant engineer in demand, Mr Denli later found recent work via an agency at JLR in Gaydon, also owned by the Tata throng.

But he kept seeing reports online appearing to display solemn safety defects in earlier models of the same VinFast car – including a video that appeared to display a car reversing with no driver in it – and crashed cars where the wheels had arrive off.

In another update, a VinFast car at a showroom in Germany caught fire.

The same components he was testing in VinFast’s VF6 and VF7 models had been carried over from two earlier models already on sale in the United States, Vietnam and Europe – the VF8 and VF9.

Then on 24 April this year, a household-of-four was killed in a crash in Pleasanton, California. Police reported the vehicle lost control, veered off the road, hit a pole and caught fire.

The following month, US safety regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), announced it was reviewing the VinFast VF8. VinFast said it was cooperating with the investigation.

The reports of the crash prompted Mr Denli to publish the posts on a Reddit account saying he had worked on the design of the car and it was a vehicle he believed endangered lives.

“I would get into every other vehicle I have designed from other brands… and every vehicle has flaws… But Vinfast, I wouldn’t get into one… never will and I won’t let my loved ones get into one either,” he wrote.

Two months later, on 18 July this year, Mr Denli’s agreement at JLR was terminated.

Internal documents obtained through a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) reveal a elder executive at his former employer Tata Technologies had been in touch with JLR executives to seek his dismissal.

After he saw the Reddit posts, Tata Technologies HR director Patrick Flood discussed his corporation’s aspiration to have Mr Denli’s recent employment terminated with JLR’s HR director and board member Dave Williams.

Mr Flood told Mr Williams that Tata throng’s client VinFasth ad conducted its own investigation and identified Mr Denli as the author of the Reddit posts: “The concern is if he has done this now, he could do the same at JLR.”

The same day he was sacked, Mr Denli was blacklisted on industry recruitment platform Magnit, which told JLR he had been “red-flagged” so any applications from him for other work via the platform would be automatically declined.

On 19 July, Mr Flood emailed JLR corporate investigators: “I just wanted to check whether the person’s services have been terminated with JLR?” The investigator confirmed they had.

The internal documents display another Tata Technologies engineer had confirmed to JLR there were problems with components Mr Denli had warned about on Reddit.

Mr Denli said his bosses at JLR knew he had done nothing incorrect in his JLR employment and told him he had been dismissed because Tata throng was embarrassed by his postings about its client, VinFast.

He is now taking JLR to an employment tribunal.

“I was distressed as to what was happening around the globe where innocent people were paying the worth – a very high worth,” he said.

“I thought that if some people would commence to talk up about it, they would actually be forced to make some changes. Unfortunately, their response was not to make these improvements, but, ‘Hey, who said this? Let’s leave and shut him up’.”

On 12 September, the NHTSA launched an investigation into the Vinfast VF8.

It announced it was looking into 3,118 VinFast vehicles sold in the US after 14 drivers reported the Lane Keep Assist systems were flawed in VF8 cars bought in 2023 and 2024.

The NHTSA said the drivers reported the structure “has hardship detecting lanes on the roadway, provides improper steering inputs and is challenging to override by the driver”.

VinFast said it would cooperate fully with the NHTSA throughout this procedure.

“We receive all safety concerns seriously and will continue to monitor the circumstance closely,” VinFast told Reuters, expressing the corporation’s confidence in its safety standards.

The number of reports of safety issues received by the NHTSA has now grown to 28.

In UK employment law, workers are supposed to be protected from employer retaliation if they disclose information they reasonably depend shows the health and safety of any person is likely to be endangered.

Under the community yield Disclosure at Work Act 1998, any clause in a agreement that seeks to bind them to silence is void.

However, there is growing pressure in Parliament for stronger safeguards for whistleblowers amid concerns existing protections are too frail.

A statement will be introduced on Wednesday proposing to set up an Office of the Whistleblower to protect workers who talk up.

Supporters such as Baroness Susan Kramer, a former transport minister, says Mr Denli’s case is not exceptional and underlines why the statement is needed.

“Whistleblowers very typically discover themselves fired, blacklisted for upcoming jobs and they pay a huge worth in terms of their personal career,” she said.

“It is not acceptable, because we require whistleblowers to deter wrongdoing and to expose wrongdoing.”

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of Whistleblowers UK, said: “This narrative is one of hundreds we listen every year from whistleblowers who have been rewarded for doing the correct thing with retaliation.

“Currently whistleblowers have to decide between speaking up and their personal wellbeing. The best incentive that MPs can deliver is to ensure whistleblowers are properly protected and that wrongdoing will be investigated.”

The BBC offered both Tata throng and JLR the chance to comment in specific.

Tata throng, the multinational corporation that owns JLR, did not respond.

JLR said it did not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

VinFast said: “We do not interfere in the recruitment or HR activities of the Tata throng or its companies. We have no further comment on the matter.”

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