Private vehicles and access control

What this guide covers

How private vehicles work — vehicles whose location and history are hidden from the general fleet, visible only to a named access list — and how to grant a driver limited use of one.

Public vs private

Every vehicle is either Public or Private.

• Public — visible to all fleet users: information, live location, and trips.
• Private — hidden, including its location, trips and live-map position, from everyone except explicitly authorised users. Used for sensitive vehicles such as an executive car.

The defining rule of a private vehicle: even the fleet manager / administrator does not see its location. Setting up who may access it is a separate thing from being able to track it.

Where to find it

Administrators open Fleet → Private Vehicles to see the private vehicles and manage their access. The list shows Registration, Vehicle and Status only — not the location. Each row has two actions:

• Manage access — opens the access dialog described below.
• Make public — clears the private flag so the vehicle returns to the fleet list, live map and trips. Its access list and driver grants are kept, so you can set it back to Private later.

Who sees what

• Accessors — named users granted access to a specific private vehicle. They can see the vehicle, its location and trips, and can take/return its keys.
• Accessors with grant authority — in addition, they can issue driver grants. The dialog lists this as Can grant drivers.
• Drivers with an active grant — while their grant is active, they see the vehicle the same way an accessor does (see below).
• Everyone else (including fleet users, dispatch, and administrators not on the list) — the vehicle does not exist for them: it is absent from lists, the map, and the API.

Making a vehicle private

In the vehicle dialog set Visibility to Private — hidden; access-listed only (see Managing vehicles). It immediately disappears for anyone not on its access list — so add the intended accessors. If you flip a vehicle to private and forget to add yourself, you will no longer see it.

The access dialog

Manage access has two sections:

• Accessors (see + take keys) — the current list with a Can grant drivers column and a revoke icon. Add someone with Add user, tick can grant if they may issue grants, and press Add.
• One-time driver grants — the grants issued so far, showing Driver, Pickups (used / allowed) and Status, with a revoke icon on active ones. Issue a new one with Grant driver, set Max pickups, and press Grant.

Driver grants

An accessor with grant authority can lend a driver the keys without adding them to the access list:

• Max pickups defaults to 1, so the usual grant is a single take-and-return. You can raise it if the driver needs the vehicle several times. Once the pickups are used up the grant is spent and cannot be reused.
• While the grant is active, the driver sees the vehicle as an accessor would: it appears in their list, and its location and trips are visible to them. Once the grant is spent or revoked, the vehicle disappears for them again.
• Issue or revoke grants from Manage access. An accessor with grant authority can also issue a one-pickup grant straight from the vehicle card on Fleet → Vehicles — the dialog is headed Grant access — one-time pickup.

Taking keys still follows the normal rules

Even with access or a grant, taking keys still requires a signed usage policy and respects the one-vehicle-at-a-time rule. See Taking and returning vehicle keys.