Automatic vehicle location (AVL or ~locating; telelocating in EU) is a means for automatically determining and transmitting the geographic location of a vehicle. This vehicle location data, from one or more vehicles, may then be collected by a vehicle tracking system to manage an overview of vehicle travel. As of 2017, GPS technology has reached the point of having the transmitting device be smaller than the size of a human thumb (thus easier to conceal), able to run 6 months or more between battery charges, easy to communicate with smartphones (merely requiring a duplicate SIM card from one's mobile phone carrier in most cases) — all for less than $20 USD.