
Tesla escalates battle over alleged theft of robocar secrets - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/tesla-escalates-battle-over-alleged-theft-of-robocar-secrets
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knolax
> the Guangzhou, China-based maker of Tesla look-alike electric cars

The car in at the top really doesn't look like any of Tesla's cars. Googling
around for the model[1] and comparing it to Tesla's SUV[0] they really don't
really have any similarities that any two random SUV's wouldn't have save for
the glass roof. Just look at the entire back profile[0][1] and the fact that
the G3 has a fairly prominent carbon fiber front grill[?] where as Tesla
always made it a point to leave a blank spot where a grill would've gone in
their cars.

[0] [https://www.tesla.com/modelx](https://www.tesla.com/modelx)

[1] [https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/xpeng/g3/first-
drives/x...](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/xpeng/g3/first-
drives/xpeng-g3-2020-review)

~~~
sjwright
True, from that Autocar gallery the Xpeng's body shape looks more like a bad
copy of a French car with a few incidental sprinklings of Tesla that could
have been described to Xpeng's designers over a brief telephone call.

From the front it looks like a Tesla Model Y that was reproduced in balloon
form—and then slightly overinflated.

The dashboard and driver display clearly too obvious liberties from the Tesla
Model S, but that design is what... eight years old now? And the real value is
in the software interaction design, not the coarse hardware alignment. Besides
it's likely that Tesla will be doing a major refresh of the Model S/X interior
within the next couple of years anyway, making the Xpeng look like a bad copy
of a decidedly dated.

(I offer no opinion about IP theft.)

~~~
knolax
> it looks more like a bad copy of a French car

Could you provide an example of this "French car" that they copied? A google
image search for "French SUV" doesn't turn up any cars that particularly
resemble the G3. A search for "French electric vehicle" turns up with a bunch
of Smart Car lookalikes. It's like whenever China is mentioned people turn
into Markov chains and have to work the word copy into the rest of their
sentence regardless of the reality.

Edit: You added a bit about the interior looking like a Model S's, which I
agree with. Personally I believe touch screens in a car console should be
illegal.

~~~
sjwright
Apologies for not being clear. I wasn’t thinking about any specific French
car, just that it had a bulgy, mid-2000s Peugeot/Citroen feel about it. Beyond
that I’d describe its body shape as almost painfully generic.

I was not accusing the design of being a clone of a specific existing design.
I was accusing it of being hideous.

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yumraj
Tesla is finally learning the lesson that all other companies doing business
in China have already learned.

Prediction: Tesla would be forced to withdraw it's lawsuit.

~~~
optimiz3
China would be short sighted to cross Tesla right now. Tesla is way more
valuable over the long term. It would ridiculously stupid to cross Tesla for a
shitty copy of last year's code.

Prediction: The lawsuit will be prosecuted and resolved in favor of Tesla.

~~~
gamblor956
Oh no! China fears the terrible might of Tesla, which sells fewer cars than
even the smallest domestic manufacturer!

More likely, China will simply steal Tesla's technology, share it with
domestic manufacturers, and tell Tesla to swallow their medicine or leave the
market, like they've done with every other foreign manufacturer that tried to
dictate terms.

~~~
optimiz3
It's pretty simple. Tesla has the best technology right now and likely will
for the next few years. Causing Tesla to leave means China loses out on future
technology. Ergo, China will likely side with Tesla. Witness the incredible
subsidies and favorable loans Tesla has been receiving in China.

~~~
gamblor956
China can steal trade secrets almost as easily from the US and they can from
China, but they have significantly more leverage when the company has a
physical presence and assets in the country.

China has been buttering up Tesla to make it easier to steal the technology by
convincing then to move a huge portion of their manufacturing and process
research into China.

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dzhiurgis
Find it hard to believe there's anything valuable to steal from Tesla. Most
the hardware is proprietary so stealing source for main computer would be
kinda pointless.

Stealing neural net would be even more pointless - it's mainly built for US
roads, to run on specialised AI computer and control specialised hardware and
can probably be extracted via firmware update anyway.

Plus Musk is always claiming to open source their patents and innovate so fast
that their old software is irrelevant.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about self driving car industry.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> Disclaimer: I know nothing about self driving car industry.

I just wonder, why do you comment then? If you by your self-assessment know
nothing, you would just be adding to confusion around the topic, or in the
best case scenario would randomly get some correct fact or intuition and thus
increase confusion even more because some people would assume the rest is
correct. Why not just comment on the things you know something about?

~~~
MauranKilom
I would read the post with implied ", right?" after every statement given the
disclaimer. Sure, it would've been possible (and likely better) to phrase
everything as questions directly, but raising interesting talking points to
start a discussion is... kind of what we are here for.

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withinrafael
Meanwhile Tesla continues to not be GPL compliant.

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ur-whale
[http://archive.is/gfyzz](http://archive.is/gfyzz)

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LoSboccacc
that why their ai ain't ready yet them stole it

