Patent ID: 8024084

Claim:
A vehicle, comprising: a plurality of different vehicle-resident sensors, each of said sensors providing a measurement related to a state of said sensor or a measurement related to a state of the mounting location of said sensor; a vehicle-resident diagnostic processor coupled to said sensors and arranged to receive data from said sensors and process the data to generate an output indicative or representative of a state of the vehicle or a state of a component of the vehicle; an occupant sensing system arranged to determine at least one property or characteristic of occupancy of the vehicle; a location determining system for determining the location of the vehicle; and a communications device coupled to said diagnostic system, said occupant sensing system and said location determining system and arranged to automatically establish a communications channel between the vehicle and a remote facility without manual intervention and wirelessly transmit the output of said diagnostic system, the determined property or characteristic of occupancy of the vehicle and the determined location of the vehicle to the remote facility.