Saudi law, not Sharia law, prohibits women from driving in Saudi Arabia. No other Muslim-majority country prohibits women from driving.

Whether or not they want to build their own cars, I don't know, but what the hiring indicates is that they want to have and develop skills and knowledge in dealing with self-driving cars (i.e. the future). It would make short-term financial sense for them to buy self-driving cars from other manufacturers and then Uberfy the interface, but the caveat is that they will be giving this key supplier a lot of negotiating power, which could be detrimental to their long-term business. If instead they partner with an established car manufacturer to create an Uber line of self-driving cars, the balance of power is more equal. In both cases, they need to be a master of this technology, and they need to develop this expertise now, and not when the future becomes the present.

I think Uber is doing it right. Kudos to them for thinking ahead. Meanwhile, they should hire more lawyers too, to ensure they company will still be around to make use of the newly-hired engineers.

... will they be given guns, or batons at least?

... are people who still use PCs from the 90s, most likely from Eastern Europe, so UKIP can continue complaining about foreigners stealing jobs away from the Brits.

Do they sell pizza? They'd be quicker than our local Domino's!

The more cars on the road, the more gas income they get! Oh wait...

Death.

They should kill the Microsoft brand instead.

Always avoid alliteration.

The story of Van Tuong Nguyen is a counterexample.

... to stop my pesky colleagues from using my computer. Worked surprisingly very well.

The money Apple spends on suing Samsung and other companies comes out of the advertising budget.

... they got all the spam as well.