Self-driving cars

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Tesla and Mobileye, an Israeli image-sensing startup, were previously working together on autonomous tech until an ugly public breakup. Mobileye expressed concerns about the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot hands-free system, while Tesla accused Mobileye of trying to block Tesla’s efforts to develop its own vision capability for its Autopilot system. Tesla also earlier this year sued the former head of its Autopilot group, Sterling Anderson, alleging that Anderson breached his contract and poached Tesla’s engineering talent to create a new startup called Aurora Innovation, which he founded with the former head of Google’s self-driving car unit. Tesla settled the lawsuit in April.

Autonomous Car Tech Is the Next Battleground in Silicon Valley | Greentech Media

While Tesla is an unusually litigious company, it’s not the only one that has turned to the courts to try to protect its autonomous car tech and talent. Google’s self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo, sued Uber last year after accusing one of its former engineers, Anthony Levandowski, of stealing confidential documents from the Google company. Levandowski left Waymo to create the self-driving tech startup Otto, which Uber acquired last year (Uber subsequently fired Levandowski after he refused to cooperate with the discovery process of the lawsuit). Uber paid $680 million (mostly in company equity) for Otto’s tech and a team of self-driving car engineers.

Autonomous Car Tech Is the Next Battleground in Silicon Valley | Greentech Media