"Disclosed are methods and devices for transitioning a mixed-mode autonomous vehicle from a human driven mode to an autonomously driven mode. Transitioning may include stopping a vehicle on a predefined landing strip and detecting a reference indicator. Based on the reference indicator, the vehicle may be able to know its exact position. Additionally, the vehicle may use the reference indictor to obtain an autonomous vehicle instruction via a URL. After the vehicle knows its precise location and has an autonomous vehicle instruction, it can operate in autonomous mode."
So it does not patent "driverless vehicle", but a particular method of transition from mixed-mode to driverless mode.
"Driverless Vechicle" is a compound adjective modifying patent. It's not a patent for (all) driverless vechicles, it's a patent regarding driverless vehicles.
I'm not expert in parse or stackmob, so I can't compare it feature-by-feature. But there are two general advantages of LeanEngine:
1. It's open-source so you have all the freedoms that come with OSS. You can tweak it, add features, fork it, etc..
2. It runs on your AppEngine instance. So you have full ownership/access to your data. Also AppEngine is proven to be scalable, has tons of features, has SLA and is (still) cheaper than comparable cloud solutions.