Tesla is continuing to pursue legal action against Chinese car manufacturer Xpeng claiming that the company stole and is using its Autopilot source code in its vehicles.
The Californian carmaker is ramping up its efforts in showing that former Autopilot engineer Guangzhi Cao downloaded the driver assistance system’s source code to his personal device through Apple Airdrop before he joined Xpeng, Bloomberg reported.
After Tesla filed its lawsuit against Cao, the engineer admitted that he had indeed downloaded some of Autopilot’s source code but asserts he deleted it before leaving the car manufacturer and joining Xpeng. On the back of receiving a subpoena, Xpeng provided Tesla with a forensic image of Cao’s laptop and more than 12,000 documents and maintained that it did not use Tesla’s Autopilot source code.
In new filings, Tesla claims that around the same time Cao was recruited by Xpeng, the Chinese automaker also hired an ex-Apple engineer who has also been accused of taking trade secrets from his employer to Xpeng. Tesla asserts that Cao and the former Apple engineer may have both been recruited by the same person from Xpeng with the aim of obtaining trade secrets from Tesla and Apple.
“The greater the similarity between the two cases, the less likely that those similarities can be dismissed as mere coincidences, and the more likely that they are the result of planning and coordination,” Tesla says.
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Tesla has also raised concerns about a text conversation Cao had with a friend shortly after the ex-Apple engineer was arrested in California before boarding a one-way flight to China in July 2018. In the text chain, Tesla quotes Cao texting a friend about the arrest where he said the engineer must have “agreed on the price before to get the documents.” However, it was actually Cao’s friend who sent that message.
Xpeng has hit back at Tesla’s claims, stating, “Tesla’s latest demands crossed the line, seeking to rummage through our IP on Tesla’s terms — and smearing us along the way with misrepresentations and innuendo. Tesla’s attempt to tie the two Chinese engineers together is ‘peddling speculation and stereotypes.”
