Introduction
Recently, Tesla and former employee, Caoguangzhi, have reached a settlement agreement, indicating that the global drama about autonomous driving that has lasted for two years has finally come to an end. Should Tesla apologize to XPeng Motors and should Elon Musk tweet an apology to He XPeng?
On April 16th, Caoguangzhi, a former “perception lead” at XPeng Motors and former engineer at Tesla, released a statement through his defense lawyer, stating that Tesla has reached a settlement agreement with him and he has apologized to Tesla. According to reports, Tesla’s lawsuit against Caoguangzhi is a “dismissal with prejudice”, which means a substantive settlement rather than a procedural one. Tesla will not be able to sue Caoguangzhi again for the same claim. In addition, according to the settlement agreement, Caoguangzhi needs to apologize to Tesla for uploading Tesla’s Autopilot source code to his personal, cloud-based storage account during his employment with Tesla.
In this personal lawsuit against Caoguangzhi, Tesla has also conducted a two-year-long intensive investigation into XPeng Motors under the court’s protection order, but ultimately failed to find any substantive evidence to support its speculation of any illegal behavior by XPeng Motors. During this process, Tesla seems to have focused its main firepower on XPeng Motors, repeatedly implying that Caoguangzhi brought the “stolen” information to XPeng Motors.
In December 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a netizen by stating that XPeng Motors used Tesla’s “old software”, but at that time Tesla could not provide any substantive evidence at the legal level. By April 2020, XPeng Motors stated in a declaration that since the lawsuit, all of Tesla’s attempts have shown obvious bullying behavior towards a young competitor, rather than trying to resolve Dr. Cao’s legal case. Later, in November 2020, when XPeng Motors announced that it would equip its vehicles with LiDAR, Elon Musk once again attacked XPeng Motors on social media, and XPeng Motors chairman He XPeng immediately countered, “The next generation of XPeng’s autonomous driving architecture, which includes LiDAR, is so threatening to someone out West that they have to spread rumors, but it has been proven that they cannot beat their competitors.”
During the two-year period when this case occurred, Tesla’s lawsuit against former employee Caoguangzhi seems to have turned into a direct or indirect accusation against XPeng Motors, and the two sides have been at odds.Up to now, neither Tesla nor XPeng Motors has made any statement about the lawsuit result. According to an insider from XPeng Motors, XPeng Motors is not a party involved in this case. The settlement was reached between Tesla and the employee Cao Guangzhi. Cao has already left XPeng Motors and is currently not holding any position there. Therefore, the fact that Tesla reached a settlement with Cao Guangzhi proves that it has nothing to do with XPeng Motors. Should Tesla apologize to XPeng? Should Musk tweet an apology to He XPeng?
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.