The ex-Apple hardware engineer, Xiaolang Zhang, who was working on an autonomous car project at the company was arrested on the 7th of July at the security checkpoint at San Jose International Airport on the way to board a “last-minute” flight to Hangzhou, China. As for the reason why, the former Apple employee was arrested on charges of stealing self-driving car technology and sharing trade secrets to the company he works for now, a Chinese electric vehicle organization called Xpeng Motors.
Specifically, U.S. federal prosecutors accused the individual of copying over 40 gigabytes of Apple’s intellectual property to his wife’s laptop before leaving Apple in April to work for Xpeng Motors themselves. Furthermore, Reuters reports that included within the downloaded data was a 25-page blueprint of a circuit board for a self-driving car which itself “serves as the basis for the instant criminal charge” states investigators.
