Apple shows ambition to get into self-driving car race

From the BBC article [1], my favorite quote was that Apple "proposes that companies in the industry share data from crashes and near-misses in order to build a more comprehensive picture than one company could manage alone, and therefore enable the design of better systems."

Aka 'It would be really helpful if we could have access to Tesla's road training data.'

It's a good idea in principle, but if Apple wants access then they can damn well afford to pay for it.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38199880

I'd like to see an architectural overview of a self-driving car. What are the most challenging systems? I can imagine that the most challenging part is the computer-vision system for detecting the road, and the radar system for detecting other vehicles and pedestrians. Given this information, finding a path from A to B without collisions seems not so difficult in comparison.

Looks like all the mega-corps are buckling and now indulging in a race to the bottom called "untold liability". I really wish I will be proved wrong.

On the other hand, there actually doesn't seem to be much happening on Apple's side. This is like the "blog post in lieu of a product" for taking "pre-orders". :-)