Climb Inside Uber's Self-Driving Car—Its Next Big Disruption

[Alex] This is an Uber,

but it's not driven by some guy trying to make extra money

off his own car.

This Uber drives itself.

The ride-sharing giant came to Pittsburgh

for its latest disruption,

the country's first autonomous taxi service.

Select Uber users can now ride in self-driving cars

with trained engineers at the wheel, just in case.

Of course, if they do their job right,

they won't be needed forever.

Here we go.

Inside, riders are greeted by a tablet

that shows them how the car works and how it sees the world.

Uber plans to introduce a fleet

of autonomous Volvo SUVs early next year,

but it's using Ford Fusions for the time being.

They can explore a 12 mile chunk of downtown Pittsburgh,

an area the company's engineers quickly plan to expand.

Over bridges, down narrow streets, around jaywalkers,

the car handles just about everything,

though the human engineer

does have to grab the wheel every few minutes.

The city of bridges is happy to host the robo-revolution,

with its promise of high-tech jobs and fewer crashes

than ever before, even if some people

find the jerry-rigged robo-rides perplexing.

It wasn't really steel, it was innovation

that built Pittsburgh.

Start-ups will choose places based upon the ability

to be innovative and there's never a time

that regulations come before innovation.

You can't stop the clock.

And if you demand on stopping the clock,

all you're assuring is that technology and those jobs

will be in a different city.

Unlike California and other states,

Pennsylvania hasn't restricted the testing of these cars,

which means there's no rule against me

climbing into the driver's seat.

Hey, so it made that turn with no problem,

little adjustment right there, but now we're heading

over the bridge.

I've had drivers who were worse than this!

It's a pretty normal ride, if you can ignore the radars,

cameras, and laser scanners.

You sit back and let someone else,

or something else, take care of the driving.

And so small talk required.