A former Apple employee arrested for stealing confidential data regarding the company's self-driving vehicle has now pleaded guilty in a federal court in San Jose, California.
Employee Pleads Guilty
According to CNBC, in 2018, the former Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang was arrested at San Jose International Airport, where he was going to board a last-minute flight to China.
Zhang was accused of transferring a 25-page document detailing a circuit board for Apple's self-driving vehicle to his wife's laptop. He also transferred technical manuals describing the company's prototype.
Mashable reported that the tech giant also accused Zhang of stealing a Linux server from the company's development labs and a couple of circuit boards he intended to bring to China.
On Tuesday, Aug. 23, Zhang pleaded guilty to a felony charge of theft of trade secrets in San Jose federal court.
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CNBC published the PDF version of the court document summarizing the proceedings in which Zhang changed his plea. The former Apple employee initially pleaded not guilty when he was indicted back in 2018.
In the documents, the court has noted that his plea agreement is under seal, and he is scheduled for sentencing on Nov. 4. Zhang will face up to ten years in prison, and his fine is up to $250,000.
Zhang formerly worked as a hardware engineer in Apple's autonomous vehicle division and was part of the team that designs and tests circuit boards for sensors.
As CNBC notes, Apple first suspected Zhang of stealing from the company when he resigned after his paternity leave and booked a flight to China.
Zhang also told the company about his plans to work with XPeng Motors, an electric vehicle manufacturer in China that is also working on launching its autonomous driving technology.
Apple immediately removed his access to the company's resources after he resigned.
The tech giant held an investigation and found out that Zhang transferred top secret files via AirDrop and a CCTV footage saw him take hardware from the company's labs.
Apple's Autonomous Vehicle
Apple's car effort, known as "Project Titan," has endured strategy changes and executive turnover since 2014. In 2021, the former head of the team, Doug Field, left for a job at Ford Motor Co. after being in charge of the project for three years.
Soon after Field left, Apple picked Kevin Lynch as his replacement, and the company decided to speed up the process.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is still very secretive about its autonomous vehicle development progress. In 2021, Apple told the publication that it decided to focus on developing full self-driving capabilities and that the company plans to launch the vehicle in 2025.
Apple's target launch date is faster than the five-to-seven-year timeline engineers at other automaker companies planned.
Tesla is years away from offering fully autonomous cars as it has only recently introduced its FSD Beta software.
Meanwhile, Waymo has suffered departures in its efforts to develop the technology, and Uber agreed to sell off its autonomous division in 2021.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster
