Billion-Dollar Ghost Town Being Built in New Mexico for Self-Driving Car Research

This is definitely very important news which will surely affect us in a positive way in the future. A site in southeastern New Mexico, near Hobbs has recently been chosen for the building of a “scientific ghost town”. It will house all the latest next-gen technologies and will put them to the test in very realistic urban environment based on an average mid-sized American town (Rock Hill, South Carolina), covering an area of nearly 40 km (15 square miles).

The project, called CITE (Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation), is expected to cost somewhere in the region of $1 billion (EUR0.77 billion). The cost is so high because the town will get all the utilities necessary for human survival (though it will still be deserted), such as water, electricity, roads, telecommunications and the necessary software to run it all, with construction beginning on June 30th.

The ‘city’ will be used to for large-scale testing of new technologies like intelligent traffic monitoring systems and self driving cars which will get much better much quicker when tested in such a controlled environment. We do suspect that we’re not being told everything there is to know about this place and its real purpose, but at least we have been made aware of its existence, and we’ve been assured that no blowing up of things will take place at the facility.

Building CITE will benefit the local communities with the creation of 350 jobs within the facility itself and over 3500 jobs indirectly linked to it.