The “will they, won’t they” drama of the Apple car has taken another exciting twist this week as it’s been uncovered that an engineer working on the secret project stole trade secrets from the iPhone maker.
According to The Verge, Xiaolang Zhang has pleaded guilty to taking trade secrets from Apple when he departed the company in 2018. Zhang had previously worked on a self-driving car project with Apple, before leaving the California-based company to work for Chinese EV startup Guangzhou Xiaopeng Motors Technology, also known as XPeng.
Following Zhang’s departure from Apple, the company found that he had “transferred around 24GB of ‘highly problematic’ data to his wife’s laptop via AirDrop.” Zhang also reportedly took circuit boards and a server from Apple’s autonomous vehicle lab. The Verge reports:
“The terms of Zhang’s plea agreement aren’t publicly available, but according to a court document uploaded by CNBC (pdf), Zhang pleaded guilty to the single theft of trade secrets count listed in his indictment.
“A conference to determine his sentencing is scheduled for November 14th. According to US law, theft of trade secrets comes with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, and CNBC reports Zhang could face up to a quarter-million-dollar fine.”
What’s interesting about this case is that it’s the only real confirmation we’ve had from Apple that it is in fact working on a self-driving car.
Sure, California permits show that the company is testing its tech on the road, and rumours swirl about who might build the Apple car, but the iPhone maker itself always remains tight-lipped about any future products.
This is now the second time Apple has been forced to show its car-building hand in this way. In 2019, another engineer was found to have smuggled details about the project to XPeng.
According to The Verge, Jizhong Chen was charged with attempting to smuggle details such as manuals, schematics, diagrams and photographs out of Apple’s labs.