Cruise, a majority-owned subsidiary of General Motors, plans to begin testing unmanned autonomous vehicles by the end of this year in San Francisco. The company said Thursday it has received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to remove the human backup drivers from its self-driving cars. The state also confirmed the permit on its website.

“Before the end of the year, we’ll be sending cars out onto the streets of SF — without gasoline and without anyone at the wheel,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann wrote in a Medium post. “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 is not the first company to receive such approval but it’s a milestone in taking Cruise’s privately operated fleet to a public level without having drivers — a goal of the company.
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