Tesla and an ex-employee have reached an agreement over the Autopilot source code for electric vehicles.

 According to a U.S. district court filing dated April 15, Tesla Inc has settled a complaint against a former employee who copied the source code of the electric vehicle (EV) maker's Autopilot technology. Tesla filed the complaint in 2019, alleging that Cao Guangzhi, a two-year Tesla employee, copied the source code before joining XMotors, the US arm of Chinese self-driving car company Xpeng, in January 2019. The settlement's terms, which included a monetary payment from Cao to Tesla, were not made public.

A request for comment from Tesla was not immediately returned. Tesla's Autopilot is a driver assistance device that handles certain driving tasks and enables drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel, but it still needs driver control and does not make the vehicle autonomous, according to the company. In the world's largest electric vehicle market, Tesla has a factory in Shanghai, placing it in direct competition with Xpeng and other Chinese firms.

Cao's legal representative confirmed the settlement in a statement to Reuters on his behalf, saying Cao never accessed any Tesla data after he left the company or provided Tesla details to XMotors or anyone else. Cao later quit XMotors, according to a statement released by the company on Friday.XMotors, which was not a party to the lawsuit, stated that it valued intellectual property rights and relied on patented R&D and intellectual property built in-house.