NAVTEQ TRUE Streetview / Lidar Car Spotted

I just spotted one of NAVTEQ’s street view cars on the road outside the Verizon center near Chinatown in Washington, DC:

With its wild rotating camera set-up, I figured I had better take a look around and see if this was the piece of niftiness behind Bing Maps’ new lidar-based 3D street-view imaging.  Found the following JUST AMAZING video explaining their 3D imaging process:

 

EDIT 11/13/12: I just found myself taking this photo of the Navteq car on Bing maps, a year after the fact!  I’m the silly looking fellow in the yellow shirt snapping the above photo.

Navteq car takes my photo while I take his photo.