Tesla and Apple both suspect that their self-driving car technology has been stolen by engineers who went over to a Chinese competitor. That’s a very time-sensitive claim, with intellectual property theft being a central issue in President Donald Trump’s intense trade war against China. The electric carmaker filed a lawsuit against XMotors.ai , the U.S. research arm of China-based Xpeng, and included a subpoena for Apple to cooperate in the suit. Tesla accused an engineer who worked on its Autopilot system of stealing thousands of highly confidential files when he left the company for a new job at XMotors.ai. Last year, prosecutors charged a hardware engineer with downloading Apple’s proprietary files as he left the company to go over to the Chinese competitor. He’d been part of the Silicon Valley-giant’s autonomous, electric car secretive development project. The engineer has pleaded not guilty to these charges. The former Tesla engineer, […]