Fleet Electrification: CAN/GPS Data From 100+ Police Cars
Case Studies / Danish National Police
Danish National Police
The Danish National Police is the highest authority within the Danish police. The Centre for Fleet and Equipment Management is responsible for managing the police vehicle fleet, amongst other responsibilities.
What problem did you solve?
As part of the green transition, the Danish National Police decided to conduct a pilot test of 10 electric uniformed patrol vehicles (VW ID.4 GTX) with the goal of evaluating their performance in daily operational situations. One key aspect was to determine if the EV-based range would impose any limitations on regular patrol duties.
To avoid purely anecdotal evidence, we aimed to collect vehicle data from the 10 pilot EVs and compare it to a benchmark fleet of 100 fossil patrol vehicles. The data collection was to be conducted through all of 2023 across 4 police districts (due to geography being a significant factor).
Grafana was used to provide ad hoc data visualization
Excel pivot tables were used in analyzing the aggregated data
How did you solve it?
We used the CANedge1 incl. GPS/IMU from CSS Electronics to collect the vehicle data, as well as provide the GPS data required for our analyses. This device allowed us to collect various parameters of interest, including state of charge, speed, temperatures (battery/indoor/outdoor), position, trip distance and more. The device was configured to request data via the vehicle OBD2 connector. The specific CAN bus protocols involved were OBD2 (from the ICE cars) and UDS (from the VW ID.4 EVs).
The data was collected from the device SD cards periodically and processed through a Python script in order to create decoded data for analysis. Importantly, the script also added custom geofence information, allowing us to e.g. evaluate the duration a vehicle would spend within a certain police station (i.e. an area with charging facilities) vs. on-the-road.
The resulting dataset comprised several GBs and was analyzed through the use of Excel pivot tables, as well as via Grafana dashboard visualization. This allowed us to produce reports that could be used as data-based supplements to the first hand driver experiences.
CSS tip: Check out our ID.4 Grafana dashboard playground.
"The CANedge1 made it possible to investigate/document usage patterns for existing ICE-vehicles to evaluate the potential for deployment of EVs - and we received perfect support"
What benefit has this led to?
The collected data has provided extensive and solid knowledge of usage patterns for patrol cars assigned to different types of tasks. In that respect, the data has formed an important and necessary part of the foundation for the decision to phase in electric vehicles for operational tasks in the coming years.
Why did you choose the CANedge1?
We needed a data acquisition device that could reliably collect data through the extended period of time for our trial period. We did consider more classic telematics devices, but ended up deciding on the offline solution provided by the CANedge1, in part to secure sensitive data from exposure. Other key factors included the compactness of the device and the detailed support provided by CSS Electronics in both device configuration and post processing.
— Carsten Nørregaard, Special Consultant
Data from the VW ID.4 was recorded via UDS requests
Comments from CSS Electronics
This use case involves long-term data collection from a fleet of vehicles. To process such data, we generally recommend to deploy a Parquet data lake.
This will make it easy to add calculated signals like geofences and perform advanced insight extraction via your preferred tools (Grafana, Excel, Python etc).
Learn more
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