Xiaolang Zhang has been fined $146,984 and sentenced to six months in prison.
Zhang, a former employee of Apple who pleaded guilty to stealing knowledge about the development of the company’s self-driving vehicle, was given a sentence of 120 days in jail followed by three years of supervised release. Zhang’s punishment was handed down after he admitted to taking the material. In the year 2018, Zhang was taken into custody at San Jose International Airport, just as he was about to board a trip to China. In the beginning, he entered a plea of not guilty; then, starting in 2022, he changed his mind and acknowledged to stealing trade secrets. In addition to serving time in prison, he is required to pay restitution in the sum of $146,984, as stated in the court record that 9to5Mac was the first to view regarding his sentencing. A fine of $250,000 and a possible prison sentence of up to ten years were initially imposed on Zhang.
During his time at Apple, the former employee worked as a hardware engineer for the company’s Project Titan program, which was an autonomous car initiative that had been on for ten years. Zhang sent a 25-page document that contained engineering drawings of a circuit board for the company’s self-driving vehicle to his wife’s laptop via AirDrop. This action was taken in response to Apple’s complaint. Along with removing circuit boards and a Linux server from the company’s development labs, he also saved a copy of technical documentation that outlined Apple’s prototype of that laptop. In addition, he stole the laptop.
Following a paternity vacation and a trip to China, Zhang resigned from his position at Apple. He informed the iPhone manufacturer that he was going to begin working for XPeng Motors in China. Given that XPeng is also working on autonomous driving technology, this apparently prompted an investigation, which discovered that Zhang was captured on CCTV taking hardware from Apple’s labs and uploading files to his wife’s computer. XPeng is also working on the technology responsible for autonomous driving. It is anticipated that he would turn himself in by the 19th of June, after which he will be sent to a facility with a minimum level of security that is located as close as feasible to his residence in San Jose, California.
For the past ten years, Apple has been working on developing a self-driving vehicle, but the company has not yet released a product that customers can purchase. It was recently revealed by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg that the corporation has altered its ambitions and is now working on producing an electric vehicle (EV) similar to Tesla’s rather than a fully fully autonomous car. It is currently anticipated that the long-awaited Apple Car will not make its appearance until the year 2028.