Alleged theft by ex-Apple employee gives insight into company’s secretive self-driving car project

Former employee accused of stealing secrets before planned move to Chinese electric car start-up Xiaopeng Motors

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Apple now has a fleet of Lexus RX450h vehicles equipped with sensors. (Picture: Apple Insider)

Andrew Barclay

Published: 7:09pm, 12 Jul 2018Updated: 8:31am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Apple is a notoriously secretive company. And for good reason: As the biggest company to ever exist, it wants to guard its next big product.

But sometimes we get a sneak peek into what that next thing might be. In this case, it’s the company’s Project Titan -- its autonomous driving initiative.

How did we find out about it?

It all happened when a former Apple employee was arrested as he was about to board a flight from the US to China, accused of stealing sensitive information from the company’s self-driving car project.

Reports say that Xiaolang Zhang, who was a hardware engineer in Apple’s autonomous vehicle team, allegedly downloaded technical manuals, engineering schematics and reports to his wife’s laptop. Prosecutors say Zhang was planning to leave Apple to start working for Chinese electric car startup Xiaopeng Motors.

Why is it so hard to make a truly self-driving car?

(Alibaba is an investor in Xiaopeng Motors. Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)

But in a strange twist of fate, it wasn’t the industrial espionage that let us find out about Project Titan -- but Apple itself.