The government has been spying on electric vehicle drivers using their mobile phone data to get insights into their behaviour, according to a new report. 

The Department for Transport commissioned a two-year study that was led by its Advanced Analytics Division and used mobile phone data that tracked car journeys based on speed and location, with EV users identified by their use of EV-related websites and apps. 

The report says that the data was “anonymised and aggregated before it was received by the department”, but it raises strong questions about the level of tracking that companies are making of phone users. Particularly with the upcoming change to a pay-per-mile tax system for EV drivers. 

The report states that it set out to discover where EVs are kept overnight and how spread out ownership is across the country, trip frequency, locations and distances travelled, and where people charged. 

The data was gathered using the O2 network, which covered the company’s direct contract and pay-as-you-go customers, as well as third customers via company’s that use the O2 infrastructure, including Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Giff Gaff and Virgin Mobile. 

The DfT report takes pains to explain that the data that the government has been handling has been stripped of certain elements for data protection reasons, but it still raises questions about the scope and breadth of what data is being captured by mobile phone providers and how it’s being used. 

A spokesperson for O2 business to business arm, O2 Daisy, said: “The fully anonymised and aggregated data used by the Department for Transport showed crowd movement patterns and mode of transportation – at no point can individuals be identified, mapped or tracked at any level, and all information shared is compliant with data protection laws.”

The company also said that its practices were lawful and included in its privacy policy, and that it complied fully with data protection requirements. 

The DfT’s report says that money was awarded from the government’s Evaluation Accelerator Fund – looking at the EAF’s reports it gave the Department for Transport £602,000 towards the study. 

Ultimately the report concludes that the data available from mobile phone providers is too unreliable to provide the specifically useful information needed for the department’s research into EV and charge point usage, but it does say that it could be useful for monitoring overarching trends. 

Electrifying founder Ginny Buckley said: “It turns out Big Brother doesn’t need to watch us – he can get the Department for Transport to analyse our data instead. Even if this data is anonymised, it will feel like a huge breach of trust to many electric car owners – particularly when pay-per-mile road charging is already on the table. When drivers were encouraged to go electric by the UK government, they weren’t warned their online behaviour could be used to digitally profile them.”

Shadow transport secretary Richard Holden MP had even stronger words to say when Electrifying asked for his reaction: "Labour have been trawling through drivers’ mobile phone data because they are desperate to make pay-per-mile charging workable. It is outrageous. Spying on motorists to force through electric vehicles people are not choosing to buy, while plotting new taxes to plug the holes created by Rachel Reeves economic disaster just sums up how terrible this government is." It's worth noting that the project was commissioned when the Conservative government was in power.