File photo/Zhang Xiaoqing (NBD)

Apr. 26 (NBD) – Chinese electric vehicle startup Xpeng said Saturday in a statement that Tesla's actions since it brought a technology theft case against a Xpeng employee are "apparently bullying of a young competitor". 

In March 2019, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Dr. Cao Guangzhi, who worked for Tesla on its autonomous driving technology Autopilot before joining Xpeng, claiming Cao had stolen trade secrets related to Autopilot while still working at Elon Musk's company.

Cao admitted in July last year that he did download Tesla's technology document on his personal devices, but only for the sake of remote working. He said he had deleted these documents before leaving Tesla, and had never transferred them to Xpeng.

On January 7, 2020, Tesla asked a court to force Xpeng to disclose all its autonomous driving source code since November 2018, when Xpeng started contacting Cao, as well as images of computer hard drives of multiple Xpeng persons including its founder He Xiaopeng.

Xiaopeng strongly rejected these demands in the Saturday statement, calling them unreasonable. The Chinese carmaker said it had hidden nothing and provided much assistance in this case over the past year, even though it is not a defendant, and so far there is no evidence showing Xpeng has abused trade secrets or had any other inappropriate conduct. 

According to the filings Xpeng submitted to court on March 31 to rebut Tesla's demands, Xpeng in June 2019 offered to Tesla forensic images of Cao's computer at Xpeng, which included Xpeng's autonomous driving source code from November 2018 to March 21, 2019, the date Tesla filed the lawsuit. 

In December 2019, Xpeng further provided information related to Cao that Tesla required.

XPeng also said it had hired third-party experts right after the lawsuit to conduct forensic investigation, which showed no traces of Tesla's code and information being transferred into Xpeng. 

Xpeng said it will leave the judgment on Cao's behavior to judges and jury in the U.S., but Tesla's failure to focus on the case per se is disappointing.

The statement came two days before Xpeng's launch of electric sports sedan model P7, which promises autonomous driving functions for highways, urban roads and valet parking.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn