About EIA's AFV Data Collection and Changes

AFV data collection requirement

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 requires EIA to collect two separate kinds of AFV data:

1. The annual inventory of AFVs in use and the fuel consumed by those vehicles
2. The annual supply of AFVs made available by original equipment manufacturers and conversion facilities

AFVs are predominately marketed to and used by fleets. Certain types of fleets are required under EPACT92 and other rules to purchase and use AFVs.

EIA's two AFV data collections (Form EIA-886)

1. EIA collects data about fuel use and number of vehicles predominantly from fleets. Because EIA's data collection did not elicit sufficient survey coverage for local and municipal governments, private fleets, and household vehicles, EIA will only publish fuel use and number of vehicles for these four fleets:
• Federal government agencies
• State government agencies
• Transit agencies
• Fuel providers (for example, companies that sell natural gas, electricity, or propane are mandated, as noted above, to use alternative fuel in their fleet vehicles.)

Also note that because EIA is only publishing four fleets, we can no longer publish national totals on the number of vehicles or fuel consumption.

2. EIA also collects data on the supply of AFVs from these types of suppliers:
• Original equipment manufacturers
• Aftermarket vehicle converters

The supply of AFVs (either manufactured or converted) also includes vehicles such as gasoline-electric hybrids and diesel-electric hybrids. These data are published in the Supplier data section, but they are not included in the User data section because they are not considered alternative fuel vehicles as defined in the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

Reasons for changes to EIA reported data

Changes to historical ethanol (E85) vehicle inventory and fuel consumption data

EIA recently determined that estimated data published since 2003 for E85 fuel use in vehicles overstated actual fuel use. EIA has since revised the annual E85 consumption data for 2010 and 2011 using actual survey data for the federal and state government sectors and recalculated the fuel use for other sectors that still required estimation to better align with actual reported consumption by AFV users.

With this release, we have published updated E85 inventory and fuel consumption data back to 2010 for the four fleet groups noted above.

Changes to electric vehicle totals

Starting with this release of the 2012 and 2013 data, the supply and inventory of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will show the break out between battery-powered electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Battery-powered electric vehicles (all electric) are now shown as dedicated electric vehicles, while plug-in hybrids are now non-dedicated electric vehicles (because the option exists to operate the plug-in on either electricity or gasoline).

Standard hybrid vehicles (those powered by an internal combustion engine that runs on gasoline or diesel and an electric motor that uses stored energy in a battery) are no longer counted as electric vehicles in the supplier data series. Data on standard hybrids are grouped into new fuel categories for gasoline-electric hybrid and diesel-electric hybrid fuel types.

Enhancement to data viewers

The two data viewers (1)fleet/fuel use and (2) supplier were updated to support customer functionality at the fuel-type level. Filter options and the ability to download the data continue to enhance the ability to browse the data.