July/Aug 2004

Vehicle tracking by Mapaphone is a key feature of Streetcar, a radical new "green" concept in car rental. Cars in the system are parked off-street at locations such as private addresses, and are booked online or by phone. There are no formalities at the collection point; users simply turn up, open the car with a member's smartcard (their "Streetcard"), which interacts with a reader inside the vehicle, and drive off. Rates include insurance.

Each car contains a mobile phone, whose technology allows text messages with details of bookings to be relayed automatically to it, and which is also used by the Mapaphone tracking system. By means of this, Streetcar is said to be able to find the whereabouts of any vehicle on request, mapping it to a typical accuracy of 300 to 600 metres. Since each location has only a few vehicles, this kind of mapping helps the company check whether vehicles will be back in time for their next booking, and arrange a backup vehicle if not.

Mapminder is published by Mapbyte Ltd, which was established in August 2000 to create and manage location based-services over Web and mobile platforms.