Apple’s Project Titan knowledge is apparently worth risking a severe jail sentence for. Xiaolang Zhang was arrested after allegedly attempting to flee to China with a whole heap of trade secrets, ready to start a job at XMotors (Xiaopeng/Xpeng Motors). Apple had been monitoring his behavior for a while, and brought the police in to stop Zhang at San Jose airport.
Apple is thought to have spent tens of billions of dollars on its automotive project, which has apparently shifted focus multiple times – from a fully-fledged autonomous car, to just a conventional electric vehicle (EV), to a software-only model, and then seemingly to a system that will augment its smartphone offerings by improving its location services. While it may be a complete mess behind the scenes, there will be some diamonds in the rough, and these are apparently worth stealing and risking some serious jail time for.
But should Apple ever be able to create a platform that can pull real time data from fleets of vehicles that can then be used to improve the service offered by its iPhones, then it could gain a very useful competitive advantage. Google is trying to do the same, via Android Auto and potentially Waymo, as the cars can funnel data to the smartphone platforms to provide things like traffic information, accurate navigation, and even things like micro-climate information or on-demand rides or deliveries.
Zhang is accused of downloading files while on paternity leave, apparently admitting that he had placed these on his wife’s laptop. He is now charged with theft of trade secrets. Zhang held a pretty senior position at Apple, joining in 2015 from Marvell, and had access to a lot of confidential databases. His primary role appears to have been designing chips. The data found on the laptop was described as “highly problematic” in the criminal complaint.
Tesla also suffered an alleged trade-secret theft at the end of June. The company is suing Martin Tripp, a former worker at the Gigafactory in Nevada that Tesla claims stole IP and also carried out hacking. The alleged sabotage came at a time when Tesla was under a lot of pressure to show it could meet its 5,000 cars-per-week production targets.
ArsTechnica reports that Tesla is now subpoenaing several technology companies, including Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, as part of that lawsuit, claiming that they held data that Tripp was trying to hide.