GE CAPITAL Fleet Services is on the brink of launching a new vehicle data collection system, after buying 500,000 shares in hi-tech vehicle tracking company Minorplanet. The investment will enable Minorplanet to develop a product specifically for the car fleet market, and an autumn launch date has been pencilled in.

Minorplanet currently uses satellite tracking technology to follow the route taken by vehicles, producing historic reports on where they went, the times they arrived, the speeds they travelled, and the distances they covered.

Michael Abrahams, chairman of Minorplanet, said: 'Our new software will be a program where we can program or schedule a vehicle by feeding in co-ordinates and it will then give the driver the route and the time for the trip. When the vehicle has done the route you can then receive a report which tells you only the exceptions to the set route.'

The company has 180 customers running 2,500 vehicles between them, and while the majority are heavy commercial vehicles, a number of car and van fleets are using the technology.