General Motors operates several proving grounds. North America Desert Proving Ground Yuma Desert Proving Ground Yuma is a facility co-built and leased by General Motors located within the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground, near Yuma, Arizona. The facility came fully online as of July 2009. The site contains an inner facility sitting on with a campus containing of building area and also has of roadway. One of the main reasons that this site was chosen was the already imposed no fly zone which helps prevent unwanted photography of pre-production prototypes undergoing testing. The facility is also used by the US Army for their own testing requirements. Other such features are: circle track (3 lanes) straight track (2–3 lanes) Ride Road (2–4 lanes) Dynamics Pad Interior Noise Road Noise Pass-by Facility Misc. grades main building Garage (40 hoists) Office (120 residents/visitors) Product Electronics/Instrumentation Lab Alignment/Tire facilities Transmission Build Room Machine/Fab shop Parts Crib Warehouse Sundrella (40 hoists) Covered parking Fuel facility Car wash Scale House / Ballast Station Milford Proving Ground The General Motors Milford Proving Ground was the industry's first dedicated automobile testing facility when it opened in 1924. It is located in Milford, Michigan and covers . 4,800 staff work in its 142 buildings today. The proving ground includes the equivalent of of roads representative of conditions found on public roadways and other specialty surfaces for vehicle testing. Some roads are open only to drivers who have passed special performance driving training. The saying goes that each mile driven on the grounds is the same as in the real world. Facilities The VDTA ("Vehicle Dynamics Test Area"), also known as "Black Lake", is a pad of blacktop for vehicle dynamics testing. Waterfowl have been known to try to land on this "lake" of asphalt. At the ends of the VDTA are two semicircle tracks used for accelerating vehicles up to high speed before entering the pad. A controlled low-friction area made of ceramic tiles is on one side of the pad. Another area is coated with the asphalt sealant Jennite and can be watered down to produce a low friction surface. The Oval Track is a circuit The Circle Track encloses the VDTA and is a banked circle. It has five lanes posted with speed limits increasing towards the outermost lane. The speed limit for the outermost lane is 100+ MPH (192 km/h). Due to the banking, each lane