Tesla Says Ex-Employee Stole 300,000 Data Files

Tesla Inc. says in a lawsuit that a former employee copied 300,000 files about the company’s Autopilot self-driving system before leaving for a job with China's Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co.

Filed in a California court yesterday, the lawsuit accuses Guangzhi Cao of the theft, the Financial Times reports. Xpeng insists it hasn’t solicited trade secrets and says it is conducting an internal investigation.

Tesla’s lawsuit marks the third time in less than nine months that a former Chinese national has been accused of taking trade secrets about self-driving cars from a U.S. company. Apple Inc. has reported two cases where a Chinese employee or former employee took trade secrets about its Titan project before joining or applying for a job with Xpeng.

Last July an ex-Apple hardware engineer was arrested and later admitted downloading engineering drawings, technical manuals and other materials from confidential Apple databases. He was one day away from boarding a plane to China to join Xpeng.

And in January a hardware engineers was arrested with a computer containing thousands of proprietary Apple files of schematics, diagrams, manuals and photographs. He had applied for a job with Xpeng.