I don't think it is completely a foregone conclusion that self-driving is even that much of an ML problem. It might be possible to handle steering, navigation,

I don't think it is completely a foregone conclusion that self-driving is even that much of an ML problem. It might be possible to handle steering, navigation, obstacle and accident avoidance purely with non-ML approaches. Then ML could be left to less safety critical features such as predicting the types of obstacles surrounding it, and their likely next moves. LIDAR (gasp!) might even help make the problem much easier. So no, I don't think that just saying you have more data is the end of the story. It's certainly AN approach, and maybe a good one, but I don't think you can conclude their engineering is better because of it.