Avis Budget Group to Roll Out TransCore's eZGo Anywhere Wireless Toll Transponders

PARSIPPANY, N.J. December 16, 2008: Avis Budget Group today announced that it has teamed up with TransCore and Highway Toll Administration (HTA) to supply eZGo Anywhere™ wireless toll collection transponders for its car and truck rental fleet of vehicles to serve customers of Avis Rent A Car, Budget Rent A Car and Budget Truck Rental.

“A tag that can be used to pay tolls wirelessly virtually anywhere in the country adds a new level of convenience for our renters,” said Michael Caron, vice president of product and program development for Avis Budget Group. “We were the first company in our industry to offer electronic toll collection, and our customers will now be the first to enjoy this enhanced new service.”

The new tags for Avis and Budget vehicles will be tested and deployed by HTA, which provides electronic toll payment services to Avis Budget Group.

“When I learned that the eZGo Anywhere transponder was being introduced in September of this year, I knew that a rental company’s customers could really benefit from this new service,” said David Centner, president and chief executive officer of HTA. “In addition, Avis Budget Group will benefit from having greater flexibility in managing its dynamic fleet movements because the transponders work virtually anywhere.”

The eZGo Anywhere transponders are interoperable with more than 95 percent of all toll systems in the United States, and have quickly garnered interest of motorists, business travelers, trucking companies, and rental businesses that want to enjoy the simplicity of wireless toll payment.

Kelly Gravelle, TransCore’s chief technical officer, explained, “The fleet management aspects of the rental car model along with the needs of their customers were among the factors that we considered in creating a new and better way for travelers to bypass cash toll lanes. With more and more municipalities and states adding electronic toll systems to highways, bridges and tunnels, some of which do not even offer a cash toll option, having a transponder that can go ‘anywhere’ the vehicle goes is a significant benefit for both drivers and transportation companies alike.”

Studies show that using electronic toll collection services helps reduce vehicle emissions, and saves travelers time, making their business travel more productive and their leisure travel more enjoyable.

About eZGo Anywhere Onboard Unit

The eZGo Anywhere onboard unit (OBU) operates in the 902-928 MHz frequency range, and is a high-speed, high-performance RFID tag suitable for electronic toll collection and traffic management applications where a standard on-board unit is specified. The eZGo Anywhere OBU employs advanced security techniques that ensure a tag's authenticity while preventing data corruption and/or alteration. In addition, tag cloning, spoofing, copying, or duplicating is prevented. eZGo Anywhere OBUs support factory programming of fixed data fields that are locked at the factory and cannot be reprogrammed.