Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors (GM  ), has received permission from the State of California to begin testing its driverless cars on Californian roadways. The permit issued to Cruise will allow the company to remove human backup drivers from its cars to begin true driverless testing.

First announced on Cruise's Medium account, the company will begin proper driverless testing by the end of the year. Cruise, a majority-owned subsidiary of GM, has tested its vehicles prior to receiving its permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles but with human backup drivers onboard. The permit will allow Cruise to remove said backup drivers, with the intent to begin testing in San Francisco before the end of the year.

"Today, Cruise received a permit from the California DMV to remove the human backup drivers from our self-driving cars. We're not the first company to receive this permit, but we're going to be the first to put it to use on the streets of a major U.S. city," said Cruise CEO Dan Ammann in his blog post. "Before the end of the year, we'll be sending cars out onto the streets of [San Francisco] - without gasoline and without anyone at the wheel. Because safely removing the driver is the true benchmark of a self-driving car, and because burning fossil fuels is no way to build the future of transportation."

Cruise isn't the first company to receive such a permit from regulators, nor will it be the last. Before Cruise, Alphabet's (GOOGL  ) Waymo and Amazon's (AMZN  ) Zoox received their own permits, among others.

The announcement may have had a hand in the excellent day GM had at the market on Thursday, helping the company recover from a rough bout of pre-market trading. GM began the day 2.1% down from yesterday's closing price at $31. GM had nothing but upward movement during trading, leaping 5.1% to reach $32.59 before the markets closed.