The University of Michigan recently built the 32-acre “Mcity” proving ground so that automakers could test autonomous vehicles with zero risk to the public. Since the faux city is in US car country (and far from Silicon Valley rivals like Google), it’s only fitting that it was broken in by a small Dearborn outfit: Ford. The automaker tackled Mcity in its latest Fusion Hybrid self-driving car, freshly equipped with four LiDAR sensors for real-time 3D mapping. While Ford has tested its vehicles extensively on public roads, “every mile driven [at Mcity] represents 10, 100 or 1,000 miles of on-road driving in terms of our ability to pack in the occurrences of difficult events,” said U of M professor Ryan Eustice.