A good answer might be:

Yes. People talk about "fleets" of cars.


Car Fleet

Consider a fleet consisting of two cars: a town car and a sports utility vehicle. Think of the fleet as a single object composed of two objects. Remember that an object has (i) identity, (ii) state, and (iii) behavior. Is this true for a fleet of cars?

  1. Identity: Yes—my fleet is different from your fleet.
  2. State: Yes—the odometer readings of each car is part of the state of the fleet.
  3. Behavior: Yes—the fleet can have a method to compute average MPG for the fleet (and can have other methods if we care to write them.)

Here is a skeleton of the Fleet class, along with the definition of Car and a testing class:

class Fleet
{
  // data
  Car town;         // the town car of the fleet
  Car suv;          // the sports utility vehicle of the fleet

  // constructor

  // method

}

class Car
{
  . . . .
}

class FleetTester
{
  Fleet myCars;

  . . . . . 
}

The definition of class Car is the same as above. It does not change, even though Car objects are now used as part of a larger object. The (not yet finished) definition of Fleet says that a fleet consists of two cars.

QUESTION 4:

Are actual car objects part of the definition of Fleet?