Ex-Tesla engineer admits saving autopilot code on iCloud, denies wrongdoing

Adding to the ongoing tensions between the US and China, a former Tesla engineer admitted in a court filing that he did upload the company’s autopilot code to his personal iCloud account last year before taking up a job in a Chinese automobile firm.

Earlier this year, Tesla sued Guangzhi Cao for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to autopilot for Alibaba-backed Chinese electric vehicle (EV)-startup Xiaopeng Motors, also called Xmotors or XPeng.

After quitting Tesla, he joined XPeng and currently serves as the company’s ‘Head of perception’ where he is “developing and delivering autonomous driving technologies for production cars”, according to his Linkedin profile.While Guangzhi admitted to using his “personal iCloud account to create backup copies of certain Tesla information in 2018”, he denied poaching any employees from the autopilot team, The Verge reported on Wednesday.