MotorTrend × DIMO · Long-term test
Nine months.
One pickup.
Every signal.
2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4
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27 Jul 2025 → 15 Apr 2026
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3,938,654 signals
We plugged a coin-sized device into the OBD port of a 2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 and let it stream every sensor reading the truck generated. Two hundred sixty-three days. Three point nine million signals. Then, because the owner is real and the data is theirs, we asked permission to publish it — and got it, cryptographically.
What follows is the first long-term test we've run that wasn't filtered through a press fleet, a logbook, or a memory. The truck spoke for itself. Some of what it said was predictable. Some wasn't.
Over the test window, our Ram moved on 168 of 260 days. On the other 92, the engine never started. When the wheels did turn, the truck covered about 40 miles a day on average and half of all trips were under 16 minutes long. The single busiest hour of the week was Sunday at 3 PM — weekend errands, not commuting.
Then there's the other half of the story. Five days — the Thanksgiving and Christmas blocks — carried 28% of the entire year's mileage. Strip those five out and our Laramie collapses into a strictly local errand vehicle. Add them back and it's a real haul-and-tow truck. Both are true. Most reviews only see one.
Nine months of GPS — sampled, anonymized to neighborhood-scale hexagons (~530 m), and rendered. Every glow is a place the Ram actually was. The bright halo in the lower right of the screen is the Detroit → Memphis run.
The Ram pointed south before sunrise on the twenty-first. Christmas in Memphis, a Lexington overnight on the way home, and back to Detroit at dusk on the twenty-seventh. Seven days, three states, three hundred fifty-seven miles on the longest single leg. Press play.
Four findings that don't fit anywhere else, each backed by the raw telemetry behind it. Tap any one for the longer version.
OBD health checks. Zero faults across the whole test window.
Health →Cold-soaked starts in a Michigan winter. Coldest: 3.2 °F.
Cold starts →Lifetime MPG. Within rounding, exactly the EPA sticker. Almost no half-ton does this.
MPG →Remote starts in nine months of Detroit winter. Once every 22 days, in the climate it was specced for.
Remote start →Every signal you've seen on this page was streamed by the vehicle itself, recorded on the DIMO network, and published here only because the owner cryptographically authorized the read. That last part is new. Most car data lives behind manufacturer walls. This is what happens when it doesn't.
Read the analyst's notes for the five findings that surprised our data desk. Or dig into the data tab by tab. The methodology documents every signal and every calibration.