Tens of millions of self-driving cars will be sharing the roads with us by the end of the next decade, and manufacturers need places to test these automobiles.  Michigan is on the short list for possible areas to perfect the technology behind driverless cars.

The two major industries that are involved in developing and testing driverless cars are the auto industry (Michigan) and the tech industry (California), and these two massive industries are battling it out for a possible $4 Billion in government grants.  In order to properly test these vehicles, researchers need roads in a variety of conditions and both Michigan and California are a perfect choice.  Each of the states have huge aging WWII facilities that work perfectly to test the self-driven automobiles due to their size and crumbling infrastructure.

Michigan has a slight edge over California in the eyes of lawmakers in Washington. Ypsilanti congresswoman, Debbie Dingell, said "California is not the real world, they don’t have four seasons... We’ve got real potholes. It’s a much more real-world scenario."

It would be great to have the possibility of $4 billion in grant money flooding into the Michigan economy over the next several years, but would you be comfortable with automated cars being tested on Michigan roads and freeways?

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