I can't tell from the picture, but their test track looks like where we used to test self-driving cars when I was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. Except when I was doing it, it was basically dirt (most of it not even roads) in a super-sketchy part of the city. The Roundhouse, where we kept the cars, looked like an abandoned building - in fact, and I am not exaggerating, 1/3 of the roof had collapsed in on the building.

It'll be interesting to see what impact this has on the city of Pittsburgh. Mayor Peduto is definitely a progressive guy who is very gung-ho about reinventing the city.

Here's another interesting fact - almost none of the initial 40 engineers that Uber poached from NREC had any previous experience with self-driving cars. Those guys mostly went to Google, and a handful created a startup called Ottomatika which was acquired by Delphi.