A former Apple engineer has admitted that he has stolen the Apple car trade secrets for the company’s project for self-driving cars. In a court in San Jose, California, Xiaolang Zhang is hearing the case. The ex-Apple employee may be sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and may also have to pay a fine of $250,000. The car engineer was all set to work in an electric vehicle company in China, and he requested a leave to look after her mother, who was sick at the same time, revealed his plans of working in a Chinese start-up for an electric vehicle. An investigation against Zhang revealed that he had transferred confidential documents consisting of blueprints of a circuit board for the autonomous Apple vehicles, and he had also stolen a server and circuit boards.
The Actual Case
Xiaolang Zhang worked as a hardware car engineer and was a part of the dev team of the autonomous car. He joined the company in 2015. Zhang used to design and test circuit boards. He also used to sensor the data collected from the feedback of the car’s system. The incident occurred in 2018 when Zhang decided to leave Apple and join a rival company in China. He joined the Apple office from paternity leave and sought extended leave due to his mother’s illness. He also revealed his plan to start work for a Chinese electric vehicle start-up named Xiaopeng Motors, aka Xpeng, a company supported by Alibaba. The internal security team of Apple car started investigating Zhang. It was found out that he had transferred some extremely confidential data to a laptop owned by his wife. The 24GB data was, needless to say, very sensitive. The data included drawings of circuit boards for autonomous vehicles, reports, manuals, and engineering schematics.
Moreover, the closed-circuit cameras caught the car engineer stealing a server from the self-driving car lab and circuit boards. The federal agents arrested Zhang at San Jose Airport in July 2018. He was all set to fly off to China by booking a flight within a very short time. Later, the laptop of Zhang’s wife was sent for forensic examinations. The circuit board and the servers were also recovered. This Apple car news created a sensation all around. The US government has sealed Zhang’s plea agreement, which is not publicly available. At the initial stage of the trial, Zhang didn’t admit his crime. But the former Apple engineer admitted that he stole Apple’s trade secrets. The court will sentence Xiaolang Zhang on 14TH November. According to the law, he may be imprisoned for ten years and a quarter-million-dollar fine.
Meanwhile, Xpeng has denied any connection to the case. The organization has stated that it has neither dispute with Apple nor is related to the case or the investigation. But, a case of a former American tech giant employee stealing properties and joining Xpeng is not new. Earlier in 2019, one of Xepeng’s former staffers was engaged in a legal dispute with Tesla. An ex-employee of Tesla named Cao Guangzhi was alleged of joining Xpeng after stealing the American tech giant’s confidential autopilot technology. Later, the lawsuit between the employee and Elon Musk’s company was settled. In 2019, another employee of Xpeng was arrested. He was also a former Apple employee and was alleged of clicking pictures and stealing hardware information. He is on bail at present.
The Secret of the Apple Car
As the new Apple news has flashed out, some interesting facts about the Apple trade secrets have come out. Only two percent of the full-time employees of the Apple car can access the self-driving car technology databases by having their admins. Details of project disclosures are also kept secretly using an internal software tool.
Setbacks for the self-driving Cars of Apple
People who keep themselves updated with Apple news may know that Apple has been working on the autonomous vehicle launching project since 2014. But it is facing one after other setbacks. When the second employee faced allegations of stealing Apple trade secrets in 2019, the autonomous vehicle project of Apple faced another setback. Lack of faith is making the project suffer repeatedly. Then, there are huge expenditures, technical problems, and manpower problems as well. Amid all these incidents, Apple is finding it hard to complete the project. As a result, the new car launch is being delayed. It is thought that the Apple car with self-driving technology can’t be launched before 2025.
A few words about Xpeng
Xpeng Motors have done well as far as autonomous vehicle-making technologies are concerned. Its focus is on LiDAR technology, and Xpeng is working with some of the best self-driving technologies available in the present market. As per claims, the company’s latest version of the autonomous vehicle can navigate busy city roads easily and also consists of auto-park technology. So it is inevitable that the Chinese organization is giving tough competition to China Tesla and has left Apple behind as it hasn’t been able to launch a self-driving car yet.
Conclusion
The followers of Apple news might have been a little bit concerned to know that Apple is not being able to launch its autonomous vehicle soon. After more than one security breach incident, the organization will be extra careful about internal security and try to boost its employees up so that they can deliver faster and better work. After the launch, the Apple car with self-driving technology will undoubtedly try to leave Xpeng behind in terms of sales.
