Uber isn't wasting any time with its self-driving car effort.

The Pittsburgh Business Times spotted one of the app-based car service's first autonomous vehicles on the road this week. The sedan has "Uber Advanced Technologies Center" written on the doors, not to mention a bunch of equipment on the roof, so Uber isn't exactly trying to hide.

In February, Uber announced it will be developing self-driving car technologies. It has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to create a new center in Pittsburgh, where it plans to do research and development "primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology," the company said earlier this year.

"As a global leader in urban transportation, we have the unique opportunity to invest in leading edge technologies to enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale," Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden said in February. "This collaboration and the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center represent an important investment in building for the long term of Uber."

Uber's Advanced Technologies Center is located near the CMU campus. A sparse website for ATC says it is "developing advanced technologies to help move people all around the world."

A number of major car makers are testing out self-driving vehicle technology, but Google is probably the most prominent tech company with autonomous cars on the road. The search giant has largely relied on tricked-out Lexus and Toyota Prius vehicles for on-road testing, but is also developing its own self-driving prototype.

Earlier this month, Google said those prototypes (which resemble tiny smart cars) will hit the road this summer.

"We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities, and ensuring our software and sensors work as they're supposed to on this new vehicle," Google said. "The new prototypes will drive with the same software that our existing fleet of self-driving Lexus RX450h SUVs uses. That fleet has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week. So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on—in fact, it's the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.