| 20110191126 | EXTERNALLY-MOUNTED APPARATUS AND ASSOCIATED SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING VEHICLE ACCESS - A person-to-person vehicle reservation system for providing distributed access control for a plurality of owner-shared vehicles is disclosed. The system uses access codes managed by an electronic system and for electronically providing access to the plurality of vehicles via smart keys. The system comprises a vehicle database for storing a mapping of vehicles to vehicle access codes; a reservation database for storing a mapping of vehicles to availability information for the vehicles; a reservation request module for receiving reservation requests over a network and for assigning vehicle reservations; and an administrative user module for receiving availability information from administrative users having administrative access to at least one vehicle. The reservation request module is operable to securely transmit a vehicle access code to an electronically-programmable smart key, which provides access to a lockbox holding an ignition key of a vehicle assigned by the reservation request module. | 08-04-2011 |
