That’s it. Skynet is just around the corner. Sure, this team of Italian engineers appear to be harmless enough, but these two driverless vehicles will set in motion a series of events that will surely lead to Judgment Day.  You read that right: driverless. They have two vehicles that can effectively drive themselves, and the goal is to get them to exactly that for a total of 8,000 miles. Over the course of the three month journey, the vans — with no one behind the wheel — will make their way from Italy to China.

Along the way, they’ll have to transverse twisty mountain roads, overcome harsh Siberian weather, and fight through dense city traffic. Eventually, if all goes well, the vans will arrive in Shanghai by October.  They say that this is perfectly safe, since each van “will work in tandem with a manned leader van that will drive ahead and give its driverless counterpart cues on where it’s going next.” This is only the beginning. It won’t be long before Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be sent from the future to save John Connor.

[Gizmodo via NPR]