Roger Fingas
Tesla has subpoenaed Apple for access to the iCloud data of an engineer who allegedly stole thousands of Autopilot source code files right before leaving to work at XMotors.ai, the U.S. research branch of China's Xpeng.
The ex-Tesla engineer, Guangzhi Cao, has already acknowledged uploading copies of Autopilot source code to his personal iCloud account, Bloomberg said in a report this week. He nevertheless claims to have done nothing wrong, saying he didn't make use of the data and has tried to scrub it from his personal devices. Cao and his lawyers have even offered to provide forensic copies of devices Tesla wants to inspect.
Apple is likely to comply with the subpoena as long as it meets legal standards. July 2018 saw prosecutors charge an engineer from Apple's self-driving program, Project Titan, with stealing trade secrets in advance of joining Xpeng. The case is still ongoing as the engineer has pleaded not guilty.
Autopilot is Tesla's branding for the self-driving systems in cars like the Model 3 and Model S. The company's AI has yet to achieve full independence, but can already park, navigate highways and change lanes with little human help.
Apple's self-driving plans remain nebulous. The company has been performing road tests and recently bought out self-driving car startup Drive.ai, but details on product integration remain scarce. A finished vehicle could hit roads in 2023 or later, or not at all.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
22 Comments
China stealing US. tech?
SHOCKED! /s
So it's another typical, IP-stealing day for China and it's government-assisted spy-cells?
So that's two head-hunted engineers taking data from their former employer to benefit their role at Xpeng. Can't ignore the growing pattern here. This shines a dark light on Xpeng, as it's likely they have a role in this behaviour, possibly coercion. All speculation, but patterns can't be ignored.
What's the term for this kind of bigotry? Scapegoating? Don't you all make comments on this forum about Google, Amazon, and other non-Chinese people or owned companies breaking the law without making sweeping claims about nationalities? Should we claim that all Americans are thieves because of them? Should we say that America is inherently skullduggerous because VirnetX won yet another lawsuit against American company Apple? I don't recall anyone making any suggestion remotely of that nature on that thread.