Apple Car, ex-employee steals self-driving car project documents August 23, 2022 0

Was theft of secret data regarding the Apple Car project. The culprit is Xiaolang Zhang, a former employee of the Cupertino company who, four years after the incident negotiated a verdict, pleading guilty in front of the federal courthouse in San Jose, California. Despite admitting to stealing data from the company’s computers, Zhang still faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Apple Car Project as we know it passes with difficulty between denial and acceptance. Last year there were several conflicting signals: they talked about the debut in 2025, then about the reorganization of the working team, then again about departures and new arrivals. Concrete – under sunlight – still nothing but that a former employee stole internal files containing valuable documents this can be interpreted as confirmation not so much of the project itself as of its current development. Zhang worked at Apple from 2015 to 2018 as a hardware engineer on the Autonomous Vehicle Working Group. In particular, he was engaged in the design and testing of printed circuit boards for automotive sensors.

Among the stolen material are manuals, descriptions of prototypes, and a 25-page document with technical schematics for the self-driving car’s circuit board. Apple discovered the theft after an employee asked for paternity leave to return to China. Returning to California, he resigned, explaining that he would go to work for Xmotors. Since then, the Cupertino company has blocked access to the internal network.

Zhang was though captured by CCTV cameras to steal data and equipment from the company’s laboratories. The second case of theft of confidential information on an Apple Car occurred in 2019: the accused, US citizen Jizhong Chen, however, did not plead guilty. The verdict in Xiaolang Zhang’s case is expected in November.