Tesla settles Autopilot trade secret suit and faces Ninth Circuit ruling on FSD case

Tesla has reached a settlement in a lawsuit involving a former engineer, Guangzhi Cao, who was accused of stealing Autopilot source code. Cao, who joined the US arm of Chinese EV maker Xpeng, agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Tesla. While Cao admitted to saving files to a personal iCloud account, his attorney stated he never accessed Tesla data after leaving the company and intended to delete the files before his departure.

In a separate legal development, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has vacated the class certification in a lawsuit regarding Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) hardware. The case, brought by Thomas J. LoSavio, alleges that Tesla misrepresented hardware capabilities on its website. The appeals court ruled that the lower court could not assume all FSD buyers saw the specific online statements, as visiting the Autopilot webpage was not a requirement for purchasing the software. The dispute has been sent back to the district court.