VIN Basics Blog

Electric vehicles (EVs) are continuing to grow in popularity due to their environmental friendliness, cost savings, lower maintenance, and improved performance. However, one of the greatest obstacles holding back the worldwide adoption of EVs is infrastructure limitations for charging stations, especially in the U.S.

This post has been republished with fully updated content since its original publish date in Nov 2015

Managing a fleet, big or small, is not an easy task. There are several items to account for and challenges to overcome in order to run a successful fleet. Some of these include saving money on fuel, ensuring the safety and job satisfaction of your drivers, keeping up with vehicle maintenance and repairs, etc. 

As electric vehicles (EVs) continue to be one of the hot topics for discussion in the auto industry, and more consumers consider making the switch from their traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, there are many questions that come along with EVs. Many of these questions are related to battery range and life expectancy, as well as charging infrastructure and the purchasing or leasing of EVs.

Though we were able to find many helpful resources that provide some great information on the questions included in this article, getting definitive answers has proven to be quite challenging, especially for some of the most pressing questions. In fact, researching answers to these questions has raised even more questions, which we will likely address in other articles. While we don’t have all the answers, we hope this article will help educate consumers, as well as other businesses in the industry looking to gain some EV knowledge.

A couple of years ago, we wrote an article about the extinction of internal combustion engines and the rise of electric vehicles. However, there were several roadblocks that were slowing down the speed of adoption, including high battery costs, the lack of infrastructure, and the desire for bigger vehicles that didn’t offer electric alternatives at the time.

As the auto industry adjusts to business post-pandemic, it appears that electric vehicles are picking up pace again with increasingly more OEMs offering electrified options in their model lineups. The current White House administration has urged OEMs to increase the production of electric vehicles to the point where they will make up more than 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030, according to MarketWatch. In this article, we thought it would be helpful to highlight some of the prominent factors that are supporting the current rise of electric vehicles.

Beyond just misleading, limited data can harm your business. Market analyst, Gartner, found that 27% of the data in the Fortune 1000 companies is considered flawed, which they defined as inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicated. According to their research, poor quality data leads to high costs, a high customer turnover rate and excessive expenses. IBM estimates that bad data costs the US economy roughly $3.1 trillion dollars each year. They also found that 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make decisions. Experian Data, in a separate study, determined that flawed data impacts the bottom line of nearly 90% of all American companies.

VIN barcode scanners are a great feature for many apps in the automotive space, especially for business processes such as scanning in inventory or fleet assets, looking up the specs on a vehicle at auction, or an insurance adjuster resolving claims.

Vehicle data and VIN decoding solutions are widely used across the automotive industry and are the foundation for many businesses. Some of the more common use cases are basic vehicle identification (year, make, model, trim, etc.) or VIN explosion, as covered in the preceding article. However, there are some less obvious uses for vehicle data/VIN decoding that may come as a surprise to you, such as the following:

There are countless ways in which vehicle data/VIN decoding can be leveraged within a business. And while each business’s use case(s) are different, there are common vehicle datasets that are needed to accomplish their goals.

In this article, we’ve covered some of the most common uses of vehicle data.

Understanding how VIN numbers work and what vehicle data can be extracted from them is a challenge, even for auto industry professionals that are familiar with VIN data. We thought it would be helpful to put together a list of common misconceptions for anyone looking for a vehicle data solution, as there’s a good chance at least one of these will resonate with you.

Vehicle subscription services started to surface in 2017 and are now available through a few manufacturers, some dealers, and several third parties including startups and vehicle rental companies. Given the diversity of businesses and level of variability in their business models, understanding how vehicle subscription services work requires a good deal of research.