What once appeared to be a revolutionary partnership between two automotive giants has now – fifteen years later – revealed itself to be arguably the biggest deception in e-mobility history. According to insiders, the secret rivalry between Toyota and Tesla began much earlier than previously thought. As early as 2010, when Tesla was still an up-and-coming startup and Toyota publicly invested in Elon Musk, a game of espionage and manipulation was playing out behind closed doors.
“I was manipulated by someone who reached out to me and sat at the same table as me,” Elon Musk recently explained in an interview with a Japanese tech magazine. Without mentioning names, the implication was clear: It concerned the then-alliance between Tesla and Toyota, in which the two companies were working together on the development of an electric vehicle. But what appeared to be a classic joint venture was apparently actually a cover for technological theft.
Documents recently leaked on platforms like “Insider EV” show that Toyota began deliberately recruiting employees from Tesla’s environment as early as 2011 and had access to internal patents and software solutions that were never officially shared. Particularly controversial: A sketch of a Tesla battery management system appeared almost identically in an internal Toyota development protocol dated 2012.
The latest scandal concerns a previously unannounced electric SUV model from Toyota, unveiled at a closed investor meeting in Osaka. The vehicle is said to cost less than $13,000 to manufacture—a price far below the competition and made possible primarily by “revolutionary thermal management systems.” These systems bear a striking resemblance to a Tesla prototype that never made it to market but was documented internally as early as 2014.
Although Toyota officially denies any wrongdoing, the tech world is in a frenzy. Numerous voices are now calling for an independent investigation – not only in the US but also in Japan. Musk himself hinted that he is “exploring all legal options” to limit the damage to Tesla.
The real scandal, however, lies not only in the alleged industrial espionage, but in the perfidious strategy: While Tesla was publicly courted as a partner, Toyota is said to have secretly carried out shadow development and unscrupulously exploited confidential insights.
This revelation not only casts a dark shadow over the image of the Japanese automotive giant, but also re-examines the question of trust in the entire tech industry. Elon Musk’s words sound like a wake-up call: “Sometimes your worst enemy is sitting right next to you—and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.”
