VIN Basics Blog

In many cases, vehicle data and VIN decoding solutions are the foundation of your automotive product’s features and processes. You may have invested a great deal of effort to integrate with your current provider. Perhaps you've migrated to a different data provider in the past and have experience working through the headaches of disparate naming conventions and issues with style/vehicle IDs.  You likely have a customer base that relies on you for progressive development and new features, as well as a busy road map ahead.

The automotive industry is running parallel races toward fully electrified and fully autonomous vehicles, and both races have a deceptively close finish line. EVs will become the norm within 10 years due to a combination of government legislation and manufacturer mandates – Progressive estimates that EVs could comprise 40% of car sales by 2030. Vehicle autonomy, meanwhile, remains a top priority for OEMs as well, with the market projected to reach $200 billion by the end of the decade. Mercedes-Benz is already certified for Level 3 autonomy, a standard that encompasses conditional hands-free driving, suggesting that Level 5 (totally automated driving) is a feasible goal for automakers more quickly than initially anticipated.

The technology involved in developing electrified, autonomous vehicles will not be universal; each feature package will have its own unique benefits, drawbacks, and relationship to road conditions and driver capabilities. Consequently, auto insurers cannot treat “ADAS” or “EV” as monolithic or even loosely segmented variables in their risk analysis; all levels of the organization must have a comprehensive understanding of their car’s technology stack to maintain a balanced risk-to-rate ratio. 

VIN Decoding solutions offer multiple levels of information for vehicle inquiries. Pattern-level VIN decoding provides information from the World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI), Vehicle Descriptor Section (VDS), the vehicle’s model year, and production plant. Option-level VIN decoding includes the serial number of the specific vehicle and often presents “as-built data” from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), such as installed options and packages, as well as the exact exterior and interior colors.

Having trouble decoding Recreational Vehicle (RV) VINs, or not obtaining as much information from the VIN as you’d hoped? You are not alone. RV VINs, particularly for motorhomes, are some of the most challenging to decode.

There are a few prominent reasons why RV VINs are more challenging to decode than a standard vehicle VIN, including the way they are built, the level of customization, and the lack of VIN standardization (for motorhomes).

Identifying the correct vehicle details and part fitment data by VIN is valuable for many repair shops, parts suppliers, and any other business dealing with the maintenance and service of vehicles. However, VIN data and part fitment data are quite different and therefore not commonly sourced and licensed under the same roof.

Typically, a VIN database and parts fitment catalog will need to be licensed separately and associated or mapped to each other, in order to identify parts for a specific vehicle by VIN. In this article, we cover what to expect from each database as well as how your business may go about identifying vehicle parts by VIN in the most efficient manner.

In a previous article, we discussed how businesses can leverage a commercial VIN decoding solution to identify vehicle specs by VIN, as well as which specs are often included. In this article, we are going to dive into which businesses benefit from this functionality. The short answer is just about any industry that has anything to do with vehicles, their maintenance, financing, insurance, or transportation. Here’s a deeper dive into some of the most popular use cases for vehicle specs identification by VIN:

This post has been republished with updates since its original publish date in July 2013

Quick access to complete and accurate vehicle specifications is necessary for many businesses in the automotive and allied industries. Firstly, I want to clarify that “vehicle specifications” can fit into more than one category. Some businesses may be looking to identify “construction” vehicle specs such as weights, dimensions, capacities, etc., while other businesses may be looking for “operation” and/or “performance” vehicle specs, including engine and transmission, standard and optional equipment, fuel economy, exterior, and interior colors, etc.

Regardless of which vehicle specs your business is looking to identify, scanning through OEM websites, vehicle manuals, or even your own internal management system/DMS often involves more effort than time allows. This is where VIN decoding comes in handy. Identifying vehicle specs by VIN number with the use of a VIN decoding solution is ideal for businesses working with several vehicle makes and models.

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.