How I Automatically Capture Driving Data From my @automatic Link in a Google Spreadsheet

I have been using the Automatic Link in my Kia Sorento since December. It is a good little device that plugs into your car’s data port and pulls out all kinds of interesting information about your driving habits. For a while, you needed the iPhone app to browse the data, and the data itself was not extractable in any easy way, but no longer.

A while back, the Automatic tracker became available on IFTTT, with a bunch of triggers that can be used in automation workflow. One of those triggers is when a new trip is completed. So I created a recipe in IFTTT that logs the data of each completed trip to a Google Spreadsheet. For now, it logs all of the data, even though I might not use all of it. The data is logged within 15 minutes of completing a “trip” (going from point a to point b and shutting of the engine). Here is a list of the data that gets collected in the spreadsheet:

• Car
• Start Time
• End Time
• Duration
• Distance (miles)
• Average MPG
• Fuel volume consumed (gal)
• Fuel cost (dollars)
• Hard brake count¹
• Hard accel count²
• Duration over 70 MPH (minutes)
• Duration over 75 MPH (minutes)
• Duration over 80 MPH (minutes)
• Trip Map URL
• Start Location Longitude
• Start Location Latitude
• Start Location Map URL
• End Location Longitude
• End Location Latitude
• End Location Map URL

The spreadsheet looks something like this:

The great thing about this is that, like the FitBit Flex or my Google Writing Tracker scripts, the data is collected automatically. This is, in my opinion, of critical importance for personal analytics, because any time you have to take for manual actions lessens the likelihood you’ll continue to collect the data. For this data, all I have to do is drive.

I only have a week of the data so far, but it has already confirmed what we already knew: we have an incredibly good commute to and from work. I live about 5 miles from the office (5.18 miles on the roads according to the Automatic Link). When we leave the house at 7:16 am (as we did yesterday), we arrive at my office at 7:28 for a total trip time of 13 minutes. (Kelly has to then catch the Yellow Line from my office to her office in the District.) Coming home. Our reverse commute in the evening takes 12 minutes, despite being right in the middle of rush hour.

There are a few things I am trying to tweak with the spreadsheet. One downside is that the data/time is entered as a text field instead of an actual date/time and that makes some charting difficult, but I’m working on some code that will convert this automatically. Then, once I have more data, producing some charts and plots similar to what I’ve done for writing and walking should be easy.

One thing I’ve learned from this that I’d never thought much about before is the cost of our commuting into the office. Looking at the fuel consumption of our commute and Automatic’s estimated fuel costs, our commute costs us $1.85/day. That amounts to $9.25/week, or assuming we work 48 weeks out of the year, $444 in fuel costs commuting to-and-from work each year.

That number is actually high because there are days when we both work from home, but I suppose the number wouldn’t be less than $400/year.

I’m looking forward to delving deeper into this data once I have more of it to make it more meaningful.

ETA: I’ve embedded my IFTTT recipe for this automation below, for easier access.