San Francisco, Jan 25 (IANS): Electric car-maker Tesla has sued a former software engineer for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its internal systems.

The lawsuit against Alex Khatilov alleged that he stole filed from Tesla's internal Warp Drive software.

The back-end software system by Tesla automates "a range of business processes involved in manufacturing and selling its cars," reports CNBC.

The company also accused him of "deleting possible evidence when security teams confronted him", the report said on Sunday.

Khatilov allegedly moved files to his personal Dropbox account. He began working for Tesla on December 28, 2020, and "almost immediately began uploading files and scripts".

The stolen Tesla code could reveal to competitors "which systems Tesla believes are important and valuable to automate and how to automate them – providing a roadmap to copy Tesla's innovation".

This is not the first time Tesla has sued ex-employees of trade theft.

In 2019, Tesla sued self-driving startup Zoox accusing four of its employees who earlier worked at Tesla for stealing confidential documents.

The case was later settled, with Zoox admitting that "certain of its new hires from Tesla" were in possession of Tesla documents. And

Another case against Guangzhi Cao, accused of stealing files related to Tesla's Autopilot system, is ongoing.