Real-World Fuel Consumption Data Comparative Analysis-A case study based on two different consumer mobile apps in Beijing city

There are increased interests in new data sources for evaluating the effectiveness policies that guide the development of the transportation sector, especially after the emergence of several notable emission scandals. However, few studies analyze these new data sources. Their applicability and usefulness are rarely compared and not well understood. This study attempts to fill this gap by drawing comparisons between two new data sources useful for assessing the actual fuel consumption (FC) of passenger cars: semi-manual calculation of FC through a dedicated app (BearOil, or Xiaoxiong) and automated FC (and other data points) collection by an On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) app (ZhiJiaXing). The study compares data features, statistical robustness and analysis results of the two datasets in a Beijing case study.