Apple Self-Driving Car Secrets Stolen By Ex-Employee
Apple as a company has been known for keeping secrets and not leaking them out. Many new gadgets and products are rarely leaked and are made known to the audience only at the actual release event. Well, this might be a first time for Apple as a former employee of the company stole a plan for a self-driving car circuit board and was planning to jump ship with it.
Apple has long been planning and researching self-driving cars. Too long, perhaps. Though other major companies have come out with prototypes and official statements on self-driving cars, Apple has kept hush about it.
Until now, that is. The former employee that was hired on December 7, 2015, was assigned to the same project that oversaw the development of the software and hardware of the self-driving vehicle. This employee personally oversaw the design of the circuit boards and worked very closely with the designs.
The ex-employee wanted to leave the company under the pretext of his mother not being too well. Though the company sanctioned the request, the meeting seemed evasive and so went ahead for a further investigation.
The ex-employee, on questioning, had mentioned that he would continue work at XMotors, a Chinese start-up that focused on electric automobiles and autonomous vehicle technology. The ex-employee had booked a flight to China and was planning to bank on that secret to pose it as a bounty.
Procedures
Apple lost no time in taking charge of the situation and is pressing charges against the ex-employee. According to a spokesperson from Apple, the company takes confidentiality and the protection of intellectual property very seriously. The company has said to be working with the authorities in reprimanding the individuals involved.
Apple has left no hands behind in making driverless cars a reality. Apple has also been relentless, too. Significant changes were made to project Titan, a project to further the interests of driverless cars to a reality.
Due to the significant changes made to the project, many even left the company. Many projects that are related to Project Titan have been made a top priority, including projects and missions like AI, mapping and computer vision and intelligence.
Development
And with all these manpower and resources put into this project, it is understandable that the company would not be happy with its data being stolen or going into the wrong hands. The company has charged some serious charges on the responsible individuals, and right now more than reprimanding the ones involved, the company would be more concerned on not letting the data be shared, and also on tracking the sharing of this data too. Though it is not clear on how this particular data was stolen from the company, for now, Project Titan is still under process and the dream of seeing a driverless car might soon become a reality.
