> Electric vehicles are many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins

What does engine complexity have to do with driving complexity? I imagine that a computer would drive a car using interfaces analogous to those we use; namely gas, brake, steer (and I guess a shifter to put it in drive).

Electric cars can react to changing inputs faster than gas powered cars. They can also have two, three or even four, independent motors driving the wheels. This makes it much easier for a computer to achieve high performance, though the difference may not be noticeable until you hit a gravel patch and attempt to recover at high speed.

Potentially, higher acceleration/deceleration would allow a computer to use simpler collision prevention algorithms. Also, there is no shifter there.

improved acceleration/deceleration aren't givens for electric vehicles. You shouldn't let the Teslas cloud your perception here - usually they are slower than their internal combustion peers. Also, no reason for a self driving algorithm to worry about shifting. In an automatic car do you worry about shifting?

> Electric vehicles are many many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins. This simplicity is passed onto the self-driving computer as fewer variables.

From the self-driving computer's perspective they are the same. Running the engine by computer is a solved problem.