The Story Behind DriveStats

DriveStats started from a simple need: I wanted to know how long my daily commute to the office actually took. Not just a rough guess — real data, for every trip, there and back. I tried a few existing apps, but none of them really did what I wanted. They gave you a basic list of trips, but no meaningful way to explore the data — no filters, no charts, no patterns over time.

Simple trip logs are fine, but they don’t capture the full story of a long journey with multiple stops, or reveal much about the "parked duration" in between. I wanted something that would reveal the big picture — not just individual data points.

So I built it myself. The core idea was simple: your driving data should be presented the way you want it. That meant charts that are highly customizable — choose your metrics, your chart types, your time periods. It meant interactive maps with configurable views — not just a static route, but a timeline you can customize. And it meant a powerful filter engine so you can slice your trip history however you want: by date, distance, location, day of the week, and more.

The same filter engine powers everything — your dashboard widgets, your map configurations, and your trip history search. One system, three ways to explore your data.

The latest update (v2.0) adds automatic fuel cost estimation — no extra hardware required. No OBD-II dongles, no manual input — just your iPhone. A physics-based model calculates fuel consumption from your actual driving patterns using vehicle-specific parameters like weight, aerodynamics, and rated fuel economy.

The result is a per-trip fuel cost estimate that reflects how you actually drove — not just a flat average from your car’s spec sheet. It runs entirely on-device, so your driving data never leaves your phone.

It’s all 100% on-device. Because it doesn’t rely on a backend server, it’s fast, private, and it will keep working regardless of what happens with development in the future. Your data stays where it belongs — on your iPhone. No cloud dependencies. No server outages. No account required.