This paper introduces benefits and challenges related to collecting and analyzing vehicle data, in particular relating to electric vehicles. We use data from a current research project as an example. We address both technical and legal issues related to the data collection. On the technical side, pre-processing steps are needed to enhance data quality because the measured data are not faultless. On the legal side, data-privacy issues arise since precise GPS locations of the vehicles are captured. Two data collection methods are introduced and compared with each other. The advantages of vehicle data collection over other data sources for addressing various research questions are discussed
