Zubie Sense for Vehicles, powered by Bosch, uses a sophisticated system to detect smoking in rental vehicles. A key component is a particle sensor that measures the concentration of tiny particles in the air inside the vehicle.
Each smoke activity is classified in one of these three options, which you will see in the Zubie app:
Vape: Indicates a non-burning product was smoked, most likely vape or heated tobacco. Recognized by glycol particle density, infrequent puffs and often multiple brief smoking events. Individual events may have relatively low total smoke levels.
Smoke: Indicates smoke from a product that burns, such as cigarettes, cigars or marijuana. Recognized by carbon monoxide and particle density, pattern of smoking and longer duration of a single smoke event with higher total smoke readings.
Smoke or Vape: Carbon monoxide and glycol particles detected confirm smoking of some sort has taken place. The specific classification is inconclusive regarding which type of smoking took place.
The classification for each smoke detected event can be viewed on the Zubie app activity feed and in the Rental Agent Browser Extension.
More Details on Smoke Event Types
Zubie Sense defines a "smoking event" as a continuous 10-minute period, starting slightly before the first detection of elevated particle levels. This 10-minute window accounts for the time it takes for smoke to build up and be consistently detected.
This is important to understand because smoke detected events can look very different depending on the situation and type of material is being smoked.
Vape Users: Vaping patterns vary quite highly per user. Vape users often take infrequent puffs, leading to multiple smoking events triggered by our service. These events may show individually low total smoke levels. Heated tobacco users may follow similar patterns as vape users.
Cigarette Smokers: A cigarette typically burns for 3-5 minutes and must be smoked within that time period, often resulting in a single, longer smoking event on the system, generally with higher total smoke readings.
Cigar Smokers: Cigar smoking can produce much longer events, sometimes lasting over the 10-minute window due to the slower burn time. These events often show very high total smoke scores.