Lei Gang from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

After two years, the once sensational case of Tesla suing a new employee of Xpeng Motors was finally settled.

Tesla initially sued for "commercial espionage," but after two years of tossing and turning, it was ultimately discovered that former employee Cao Guangzhi had behaved improperly and had privately backed up the code, but there was no evidence to conclude that his new employer, Xpeng Motors, had any connection with this.

So Tesla reached a settlement with its former employee Cao Guangzhi, and Cao Guangzhi once again apologized to Xiaopeng Motors, which was unjustifiably involved - also as a former employee.

This seems to be a happy ending.

However, foreign media Insideevs pointed out that suing former employees, accusing their new employers - mainly Tesla's competitors, and then involving them in lengthy litigation cycles and reputation disputes in order to gain competitive advantage is a common tactic used by Tesla.

Insideevs also further compared the current autonomous driving solutions of Tesla and Xpeng Motors and found that the two sides are taking two obviously different technical routes.

This reminds people of the book "The American Trap" that was on Ren Zhengfei's desk during Huawei's suffering. The core idea of ​​the book is: "Disintegrate competitors through non-commercial means."

It’s terrifying when you think about it, but it’s not illogical.

The final conclusion of the case

According to a statement from Cao Guangzhi's defense lawyer, Tesla has reached a settlement agreement with Cao Guangzhi.

After two years of litigation and investigation, the latest conclusions are as follows:

• 1. Cao Guangzhi admitted that he backed up Tesla's AutoPilot code in his personal cloud, but it was not intentional and had no commercial purpose, nor did he provide Tesla code to any third party.

• 2. After receiving the offer from Xiaopeng Motors, Cao Guangzhi began to delete the personal backup codes.

• 3. After Tesla filed a lawsuit against Cao Guangzhi, Xpeng Motors took the initiative to provide Cao Guangzhi's work computer image and related documents to prove its innocence, and immediately stopped Cao Guangzhi's work cooperation with the lawsuit. It was not until 2020 that Tesla asked Xpeng Motors to provide its own autonomous driving system source code and patented technology that was not directly related to this case, which was questioned and rejected by Xpeng Motors. Prior to this, Xpeng Motors cooperated with Tesla's investigation and provided 12,000 documents.

• 4. Tesla ultimately failed to produce any evidence to prove that Cao Guangzhi’s backup behavior had any connection with Xiaopeng Motors.

• 5. Because the lawsuit became increasingly protracted, Xiaopeng Motors was unable to allow Cao Guangzhi to continue working for it, and the two parties were forced to terminate the contract.

• 6. According to the settlement agreement, Cao Guangzhi shall bear the litigation costs and pay compensation to Tesla due to his personal misconduct, and the two parties shall reach a substantive settlement.

• 7. In his lawyer's statement, Cao Guangzhi specifically apologized to his former employer, Xiaopeng Motors, saying that it was because of his own reasons that the latter was involved in unnecessary disputes and doubts.

At this point, the litigation dispute between Tesla, Cao Guangzhi and Xiaopeng Motors two years ago has come to an end.

Because this is a dismissal with prejudice , according to US law, Tesla cannot file a lawsuit against Cao Guangzhi again for the same reason.

It also means that Xiaopeng Motors has finally been vindicated. In this civil lawsuit, which has attracted widespread attention for "commercial theft" and geopolitics, Xiaopeng Motors became one of the protagonists of public opinion even though it was not the subject of the lawsuit. It took two years for the result to come out.

However, even so, the influence that Tesla and Musk have released in public opinion may not disappear immediately.

Grudges

The case of Cao Guangzhi occurred in March 2019.

At that time, Tesla sued its former employee Cao Guangzhi in court and jointly accused Xiaopeng Motors of "commercial theft."

At that time, it was accused that Xiaopeng Motors colluded with former employees who had jumped from Tesla to steal the trade secrets of its autonomous driving system AutoPilot.

The reason was that Cao Guangzhi, a former Tesla employee who had access to the source code of AutoPilot, announced his resignation on January 3 of that year and jumped to Xiaopeng Motors, a new car-making company.

Non-compete agreements are illegal in California, so this kind of job-hopping is reasonable and legal.

But Tesla found evidence - Cao Guangzhi had previously backed up a "complete copy of Tesla Autopilot-related source code" in his iCloud cloud, copying a total of more than 300,000 Autopilot-related files and directories.

Therefore, Tesla suspects that Cao Guangzhi jumped to Xiaopeng Motors with the code, and it may be the latter who "instigated" him.

At that time, both sides of the Pacific Ocean were paying the most attention to AI technology and intellectual property rights, so a single stone caused a thousand ripples, and the Chinese startup Xpeng Motors attracted the attention of China and the United States.

Xiaopeng Motors immediately responded, saying that it had also launched an internal investigation and would provide Cao Guangzhi's work computer and documents at Xiaopeng Motors to prove his innocence.

Furthermore, Xpeng Motors responded after an official investigation, saying that it did not find the violations claimed by Tesla and that Tesla's description was not true.

Recently, Tesla filed a civil lawsuit against its former employee, visual scientist, and current Xiaopeng Motors employee, Mr. Cao Guangzhi. Some media reports linked this matter to Xiaopeng Motors. In response, Xiaopeng Motors issued the following statement:

1. Before and after Mr. Cao Guangzhi joined the company, Xiaopeng Motors did not find any possible violations as claimed by Tesla. Currently, Xiaopeng Motors has launched a further investigation into this matter.

2. We are paying close attention to this matter and thank you for your attention and understanding. A few media reports and Tesla’s descriptions and speculations about Xpeng Motors in this case are not in line with the facts.

3. Xpeng Motors is one of China's leading new car companies, conducting independent research and development in multiple fields such as autonomous driving. We firmly believe that groundless accusations will not suppress innovation. Xpeng Motors will continue to introduce high-tech talents in multiple fields and actively face the wave of competition in the global smart car industry.

Differences in autonomous driving solutions

It is worth noting that in March 2019, Xpeng Motors was still a startup car company preparing to launch its first car.

At that time, it was not possible to prove the difference between our autonomous driving route and Tesla's through products and solutions.

But two years have passed, and looking back now, Xpeng Motors has taken a different route in autonomous driving technology from Tesla.

In other words, although Tesla is a pioneer in mass-produced autonomous driving, it does not make sense for Xpeng Motors to use its technology to develop another route.

Foreign media Insideevs compared the two sides' autonomous driving technology routes:

It is obvious that Xiaopeng Motors is taking the multi-sensor redundant route of lidar + camera, while Tesla is determined to stick to the pure vision solution of camera.

In the field of autonomous driving, LiDAR + camera is mostly standard for L4 autonomous driving, and Xiaopeng Motors is obviously using the "reduced dimension" method to mass-produce cars; while the core of camera pure vision is the advancement of "upgraded dimension iteration"...

Therefore, Tesla believes that Xpeng Motors has copied AutoPilot, which means that Xpeng Motors is using low-dimensional architecture in high-dimensional solutions. Not to mention the difficulty of technology integration, it is also logically untenable.

More importantly, now, two years later, Xpeng Motors has Xpeng NGP, which can be directly compared with the high-speed loop autonomous driving capabilities in Tesla AutoPilot.

Judging from the feedback from car owners, Xiaopeng NGP is far better than Tesla AutoPilot in the same scenario...

In other words, two years ago, Tesla thought that Xpeng Motors was copying its homework, but two years later, it turned out that Xpeng Motors performed better than Tesla.

If it was really plagiarism, this would be almost impossible.

So the question is, why do Tesla and even Musk spare no effort to "characterize" Xiaopeng Motors through public opinion before the results of the lawsuit are released?

Tesla's "American Trap" Routine

Foreign media Insideevs provides an idea:

This is Tesla’s usual competitive tactic.

In addition to Xpeng Motors, Tesla has also sued star autonomous driving companies such as Aurora and Zoox for "stealing secrets before leaving the company," and has labeled them all as "technology stealers."

In the end, the outcomes of these lawsuits were all similar.

That is, after a protracted litigation, the case is settled or withdrawn without direct evidence.

Unicorn Aurora has also publicly protested against Tesla's approach, believing that it is essentially motivated by competition and abnormal fear, attempting to abuse the legal system, destroy the other party's reputation in the process, and then stifle competitors.

To put it more bluntly: killing people and destroying their hearts.

And there is indeed direct performance.

For example, just last November, after Xpeng Motors officially announced the launch of LiDAR , Musk directly dissed it, using his comments to imply that Xpeng Motors "has an old version of Tesla's technology."

Logically speaking, for disputes that have entered the legal process, the person in charge of the company involved cannot make such comments before the results are announced.

But Musk still kills people and hurts their hearts on the platform where he has a strong influence on public opinion.

In addition, a comment was made in a news report about new developments in the use of lidar, which would be confusing to people who don't know the background.

However, considering the competition, especially the competition in autonomous driving, it may be much more reasonable.

Musk has always made harsh remarks - "Only fools use lidar", as well as lawsuits and diss against other companies, mostly because of autonomous driving.

Why?

Because this is where Tesla's real core competitiveness lies. Perhaps earlier, Tesla would be regarded as a new energy and electric power, but with the resolution of delivery issues and the release of FSD, Tesla began to enjoy the valuation of "autonomous driving" and embarked on a road of rapid development.

Barron's previously analyzed that more than 60% of the current market value of $700 billion comes from expectations for autonomous driving .

So from this perspective, perhaps we can better understand Tesla's special attention to Xpeng Motors.

Back to two years ago, Xpeng Motors was still a startup company that had no mass-produced cars on the road, but it demonstrated its determination to develop its own autonomous driving and its high-profile investment in relevant talents.

As the saying goes, a duck knows first when the river water warms in spring. Tesla sensed the potential threat, so it took advantage of Cao Guangzhi's irregular behavior to drag Xiaopeng Motors into litigation.

The effect is naturally good.

In the next two years, before today's lawsuit settlement, the doubts surrounding Xiaopeng Motors have never been cleared.

And will it be cleared immediately after the results come out? Perhaps not. After all, in the era of information explosion, more people only pay attention to the beginning, but not the final truth and results.

So this is where we need to be vigilant.

When Huawei began to be suppressed due to its leading position in 5G, the book "American Trap" that was photographed on Ren Zhengfei's desk gave a clear revelation that in commercial competition, if non-commercial means are used to drag the opponent into litigation and public opinion influence, the opponent can be disintegrated.

Back to the feud between Xpeng Motors and Tesla, although it cannot be compared with the Huawei incident, core similarities can still be found in the routine of "The American Trap".

Today, Tesla is truly unrivaled in the field of smart electric vehicles.

But that doesn't mean it will be smooth sailing in China, and in aspects such as autonomous driving capabilities, Xpeng Motors is providing more competitive options.

If this option is lost, the arrogance of the monopolists may only become more serious.

So while Tesla has withdrawn its lawsuit and reached a settlement, and Xpeng Motors has been cleared of its injustice, it is also time to be wary of this "American trap" routine.

Especially in the field of autonomous driving, the suppression Huawei has suffered due to 5G may happen again.

refer to:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22383620/tesla-autopilot-settlement-xmotors-self-driving-source-code

https://insideevs.com/news/418896/xpeng-motors-responds-to-tesla-autopilot-lawsuit/

https://electrek.co/2021/04/16/tesla-settles-lawsuit-against-engineer-who-stole-autopilot-source-code-chinese-competitor/