VIN Basics Blog

In the last ten years vehicle technology, specifically in regard to safety features, has become increasingly complex. These advanced vehicle safety features are often bucketed under the category “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems,” more commonly known as ADAS. While the key motivator of this growth has been driver safety, ADAS will play a larger role for those on the business side of automotive in everything from data collection to lending to titling over the next few years. Some of the most popular ADAS features are: braking assist, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, blind spot detection, and rear cross traffic alert.

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Topics: Safety, Automotive Technology, ADAS

This post has been republished with updates since its original publication date in June 2012

While the light-duty and passenger segments encompass a large portion of the vehicles that one might be looking to VIN decode, it certainly doesn't cover them all. These additional segments, such as mid-duty, heavy-duty, and motorcycles, each represent huge markets with large direct and allied business opportunities. As a result, there is a fair amount of interest in services to VIN decode these vehicles.

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Topics: VIN

This post has been republished with updates since its original publication date in April 2012

The NHTSA standard for VIN assignment is applied to all motorized vehicles, motorcycles, and trailers that travel on the roads, streets, and highways of the US. However, the NHTSA has no jurisdiction over recreational vehicles not intended to ever be driven on a street or highway.

These "off-road" recreational vehicles are hugely popular and account for millions of purchases and tens of millions of vehicles in use in the US every year. As a result, there is a need to decode and identify these vehicles for initial sales and marketing efforts, resale, registration, insurance, and taxation. 

Are these vehicles able to be VIN decoded using the same principles and decoders used for light-duty and passenger vehicles? The answer is a solid... maybe.

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Topics: Auto Portals, Automotive Data, Vehicle, VIN, Powersports

While e-commerce has taken the retail industry by storm, there are a few businesses, including dealerships, that have been reluctant to embrace an e-commerce (or digital retailing) business model. Rightfully so. Purchasing a vehicle is a big decision, and many consumers would still prefer to complete some of the steps at the physical dealership, such as test drives and financing.

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Topics: Vehicle Shopping, Roundup

Today’s automotive landscape is much different than 20 years ago, with the average life of a vehicle at a record high of 11.8 years. Automotive manufacturers across the board are building high-quality, longer-lasting vehicles, provided the owner keeps up with maintenance.

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Topics: Automotive Data, Parts & Services, Insurance, Dealers

We are living in a strange time right with a pandemic (COVID-19) that has greatly affected people worldwide and shuttered economies. Millions of people in the United States are out of work (hundreds of millions worldwide) and many businesses have had no choice but to furlough or lay off their employees, or even worse, close their doors permanently.

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Topics: Parts & Services, Insurance, Automotive, Dealers, Fleet Management

As a dealership vendor, it should come as no surprise that dealerships see the largest profit margins from their fixed operations department. In fact, you’ve probably had your hand in the creation of content around this topic on some level, whether it be a comprehensive study or articles on your blog.

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Topics: Automotive Data, Dealers, Service Data

NADA is just around the corner, and with it comes a packed-full agenda of speakers, networking, and private parties. However, if you anticipate any downtime around the show, here’s a list of fun things we found to do in Vegas.

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Topics: NADA Conference, Conferences

Last month, Jake Maki, our Vice President & General Manager, joined DealerRefresh for their weekly RefreshFriday Facebook Live stream to provide some insight into some of the key challenges vendors face when working with vehicle data. Learn why vehicle data is so complex and how DataOne works to make it more consumable for our end users.

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Topics: Automotive Data, VIN, Dealers

Content marketing has proven to be an effective marketing strategy across many industries, including the auto industry. In the automotive retail space, content marketing is a great way to connect potential vehicle buyers with valuable content that answers their questions and builds trust with your dealership, or your allied business.

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Topics: Automotive Data, Automotive Content, Vehicle Shopping