Identifying and Recognizing Usage Pattern of Electric Vehicles Using GPS and On-Board
Diagnostics Data
Xiaohong Chen, Ph.D.
1
; Kunyun Li
2
; Hua Zhang, Ph.D.
3
; Quan Yuan, Ph.D.
4
; and Qian Ye
5
1
Professor, Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education,
College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji Univ., Shanghai, China. Email:
tongjicxh@163.com
2
Writer and Master, Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of
Education, College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji Univ., Shanghai, China. Email:
tjkyl2014@163.com
3
Assistant Professor, National Maglev Transportation Engineering R&D Center, Tongji Univ.,
Shanghai, China (corresponding author). Email: xiaohai_hua@tongji.edu.cn
4
Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education, College of
Transportation Engineering, Tongji Univ., Shanghai, China. Email:
quanyuan2019@outlook.com
5
Ph.D. Candidate, Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education,
College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji Univ., Shanghai, China. Email:
yeqian122@163.com
ABSTRACT
The electric vehicle (EV) market in China has expanded substantially thanks to a series of
incentive policies. The operational characteristics and usage patterns of EVs are different from
those of traditional fuel vehicles (TFVs), especially in terms of energy savings and cruising
duration of battery. With required energy management devices, EVs inadvertently generate fine-
grained and continuous trajectory data, which provides an unprecedented opportunity to study
the multi-person and multi-day usage patterns of EVs. The data set used in this study includes
GPS and on-board diagnostics (OBD) information of 8,000 EVs including both plug-in hybrid
electric vehicle (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) within one-week in Shanghai. A
multi-day activity data set is created for each user. The concept of entropy is introduced and
modified to describe and distinguish the usage stability of each vehicle through the multi-day
activity data set. Based on indicators including usage duration, travel mileage, and spatial
parking location, the usage patterns of EVs could be classified into three modes: individual,
commercial, and semi-commercial. Among all activities, over 4.5% is used fully for commercial,
and 20% is used partly for e-hailing services. Furthermore, results reveal that PHEVs’ average
travel distance of individual groups is significantly higher than that of BEVs. The findings have a
profound long-term implication on urban traffic demand with the growth of EVs. The research
expands the understanding of the changes brought by transport technological evolutions to
human activity patterns, and provides quantitative support for the adjustment of electric vehicle
supporting policies.
Keywords: Electric vehicles; Trajectory data; Clustering; Usage pattern,
1. INTRODUCTION
To relieve the growing traffic congestion, major Chinese megacities have extensively
implemented policies to restrict the use of traditional fuel vehicles (TFVs). Examples include
new license plate quotas, vehicle use restrictions based on the last digit of license plate numbers,
International Conference on Transportation and Development 2020 85
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