labs.llc VIN The decoder
Decode a VIN

VIN decoder · off NHTSA’s own files

Seventeen characters,
and what NHTSA knows.

A vehicle identification number is a sentence in a fixed grammar: who made the vehicle, what kind it is, a digit that checks the rest, the model year, the plant and the serial. This page reads the grammar in your browser — the check digit worked out in front of you — then asks the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own decoder what the manufacturer filed for it: make, model, trim, engine, drivetrain, where it was built, and the safety equipment it lists for the model as standard or optional.

With the make, model and year decoded, it reads NHTSA’s recall campaigns and the complaints owners have filed about the same vehicle, every figure counted from NHTSA’s answer and every date the one NHTSA gave, written out as day, month and year — and the EPA’s fuel economy for it, off fueleconomy.gov. No VIN to hand? Pick the year, make and model from NHTSA’s own lists instead. The VIN goes from your browser to NHTSA and nowhere else.

Decode a VIN Recalls & complaints Where it comes from

17 characters, or a year, make and model · the check digit worked here · every field vPIC fills · recalls and complaints for the make, model and year · the EPA’s MPG · no relay, nothing kept

The decoder

Type it, paste it, or take a sample.

Seventeen letters and digits — on the dashboard at the corner of the windscreen, on the driver’s door pillar, and on the title, registration and insurance card. Spaces and dashes are ignored. I, O and Q are never used in a VIN, so they are refused rather than guessed at. No VIN to hand? Pick the year, make and model instead.

The VIN

nothing asked yet

0 of 17

The samples are VINs published as worked examples, not anyone’s car: a 2003 Honda Accord, and the 1989 motor coach whose check digit comes out as X.

Worked here, before anything is sent

The check digit

Seventeen characters are needed for the working.

Reading the rest

The year code, the region letter, the maker’s code and the plant are read here once the VIN is whole.

What NHTSA’s decoder says

The vehicle, as its maker filed it.

NHTSA’s Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing — vPIC — decodes a VIN against the patterns each manufacturer files with the agency. Only the fields it filled are shown. A field it left blank means NHTSA has no data on it, not that the vehicle lacks the thing.

vPIC

waiting for a VIN

Decode a VIN above and vPIC’s answer is laid out here, grouped: the vehicle, the engine and drivetrain, where it was built, and the safety equipment.

Recalls

Every campaign for the make, model and year.

Not this vehicle’s repair status

These are the recall campaigns NHTSA holds for every vehicle of this make, model and model year. Whether this particular VIN is covered by one, and whether a dealer has already done the work, only NHTSA’s own VIN search can say — it reads the manufacturers’ records of each car.

Check a VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls

NHTSA recall campaigns

waiting for a decode

Once a VIN is decoded, the campaigns for its make, model and year are read here.

Food, drugs, medical devices and household products are recalled by other agencies — the Recall wire reads the FDA, the USDA and the CPSC →

Complaints

What owners have told NHTSA.

Owners file complaints with NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation, and NHTSA publishes them as filed. They are not verified; they are what investigators read when they look for a pattern. Every count below is counted here from NHTSA’s answer.

NHTSA owner complaints

waiting for a decode

Once a VIN is decoded, the complaints filed about its make, model and year are counted here.

Fuel economy

What the EPA says it burns.

fueleconomy.gov — run by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy and the EPA — rates each engine and transmission separately. Once the vehicle is named, its list for the year and make is read here; when NHTSA’s decode names the engine and exactly one configuration matches it, that one opens by itself, and the panel says so. For an electric car the figure is MPGe. The whole lookup, by its own four menus, is MPG Lookup.

fueleconomy.gov

waiting for a vehicle

Once a vehicle is named — by VIN or by year, make and model — the EPA’s city, highway and combined figures for it are read here.

How a VIN is built

The grammar, from the rule itself.

The US rule is 49 CFR Part 565. It says a VIN has seventeen characters, that a check digit is one of them, and that every character is a digit or one of the letters A B C D E F G H J K L M N P R S T U V W X Y Z — the alphabet without I, O and Q. It divides the seventeen positions into four sections:

The sections of a VIN under 49 CFR 565.15
PositionsSectionWhat it holds
1–3First section; in the trade, the world manufacturer identifier (WMI)The manufacturer and the type of vehicle. A maker of fewer than 1,000 vehicles of a type a year has a 9 in position 3, and positions 12–14 complete its identifier.
4–8Second section; in the trade, the vehicle descriptor section (VDS)The vehicle’s attributes — for a passenger car: make, line, series, body type, engine type, and every restraint and where it is. The maker chooses the coding and files the key with NHTSA.
9Third sectionThe check digit: 0 to 9, or X.
10Fourth section; in the trade, the vehicle identifier section (VIS)The model year, as a code.
11The plant of manufacture.
12–17The number the maker assigns in sequence in production (positions 15–17 for a low-volume maker).

The rule calls the parts “sections”; WMI, VDS and VIS are the names used with the ISO standards the VIN is based on, and they do not cut the VIN identically: as Wikipedia describes the ISO scheme, the descriptor runs from position 4 to 9, where the US rule makes position 9 a section of its own.

The check digit, step by step

The check digit is there, the rule says, “to provide a means for verifying the accuracy of any VIN transcription”. 49 CFR 565.15(c) works it in four steps:

  1. Give every character a value. A digit is worth itself; a letter is worth the value below.
  2. Multiply each value by the weight of its position. Position 9, where the check digit goes, is not weighed.
  3. Add the products and divide the total by 11.
  4. The remainder is the check digit. A remainder of 10 is written X.

Values of the letters

  • A1
  • B2
  • C3
  • D4
  • E5
  • F6
  • G7
  • H8
  • J1
  • K2
  • L3
  • M4
  • N5
  • P7
  • R9
  • S2
  • T3
  • U4
  • V5
  • W6
  • X7
  • Y8
  • Z9

Weights of the positions

  • 18
  • 27
  • 36
  • 45
  • 54
  • 63
  • 72
  • 810
  • 9—
  • 109
  • 118
  • 127
  • 136
  • 145
  • 154
  • 163
  • 172

The rule’s own example

Table VI of 565.15 works the sum for a sample VIN, 1G4AH59H?5G118341, the question mark standing for the digit to be found:

The sample calculation in 49 CFR 565.15, Table VI
PositionCharacterValueWeightProduct
11188
2G7749
344624
4A155
5H8432
655315
799218
8H81080
9?—00
1055945
11G7856
121177
131166
1488540
1533412
1644312
171122

The products add up to 411. 411 ÷ 11 = 37, remainder 4, so the check digit is 4 and the whole VIN reads 1G4AH59H45G118341. Paste it into the decoder above to watch the same arithmetic.

If the check digit fails

Most often a character was misread or mistyped — that is what the digit is for. It does not by itself mean the VIN is false: the check digit is compulsory in North America and China but not in Europe, so a VIN assigned outside the US rule can fail and be genuine. A passing digit, in turn, proves only that the seventeen characters agree with each other, not that a vehicle with that VIN exists.

The model year in position 10

Thirty codes, in a cycle that repeats every thirty years: the letters A to Y without I, O, Q and U, then the digits 1 to 9. Each code names two years in the rule’s tables, which run from 1980 to 2039:

  • A1980 · 2010
  • B1981 · 2011
  • C1982 · 2012
  • D1983 · 2013
  • E1984 · 2014
  • F1985 · 2015
  • G1986 · 2016
  • H1987 · 2017
  • J1988 · 2018
  • K1989 · 2019
  • L1990 · 2020
  • M1991 · 2021
  • N1992 · 2022
  • P1993 · 2023
  • R1994 · 2024
  • S1995 · 2025
  • T1996 · 2026
  • V1997 · 2027
  • W1998 · 2028
  • X1999 · 2029
  • Y2000 · 2030
  • 12001 · 2031
  • 22002 · 2032
  • 32003 · 2033
  • 42004 · 2034
  • 52005 · 2035
  • 62006 · 2036
  • 72007 · 2037
  • 82008 · 2038
  • 92009 · 2039

Position 7 settles which. For a passenger car, and for a multipurpose vehicle or truck of 10,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating or less, the rule says a digit in position 7 means 1980–2009 and a letter means 2010–2039. For other vehicles the VIN alone does not settle it; NHTSA’s decoder answers from what the maker filed. The rule also asks that no two vehicles built within sixty years of the 1980 model year share a VIN.

Method

What is fetched, what is worked out, and where your VIN goes.

The sources

vPIC, NHTSA’s Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing: vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVinValuesExtended/<VIN>?format=json. It decodes against what manufacturers file with NHTSA under 49 CFR Part 565. Its error code and text are printed as it wrote them, and so is its own note on blank fields.

Recalls: api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle — campaign number, report date, component, summary, consequence, remedy and the park-it and park-outside flags, all NHTSA’s. Complaints: api.nhtsa.gov/complaints/complaintsByVehicle. Years, makes and models: api.nhtsa.gov/products/vehicle/modelYears, …/makes and …/models, for the year, make and model tab and to match names.

Fuel economy: www.fueleconomy.gov/ws/rest/vehicle/menu/… and …/vehicle/<id> — the EPA’s estimates, published by fueleconomy.gov, which Oak Ridge National Laboratory runs for the Department of Energy and the EPA. Its plain range field is not in its documentation, so an electric car’s range is not shown.

All are keyless public services of the U.S. government, read straight from your browser (they allow it); the data is federal government work, free to reuse. None of them dates its answer as a whole, so each panel prints the time it was read by your clock and the newest date inside the answer.

Worked out here

The check digit: each letter transliterated (A–H = 1–8, J–N = 1–5, P = 7, R = 9, S–Z = 2–9), multiplied by the weights 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 10 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2, summed, and the sum’s remainder after dividing by eleven compared with position nine (X for ten); tested against the rule’s own worked example. The model-year letter, its thirty-year cycle and the position-seven rule; the region letter, read from ISO’s chart of the ISO 3780 codes. Every count, total and component tally. Dates are reformatted to day, month and year; NHTSA writes recall dates day first and complaint dates month first, and the string it sent is kept on each date. Two kinds of broken punctuation in NHTSA’s text — Windows-1252 control codes, and curly quotes that lost their high byte — are put back for display; no other character is changed.

The limits

Seventeen-character VINs began with model year 1981; older vehicles carry shorter serials that vPIC cannot read. A vehicle never sold in the United States may decode thinly or not at all, and may carry no real check digit — hence a warning, not a refusal. These are US registers: recalls, complaints and EPA ratings outside the United States are not in them. Recalls and complaints are filed by make, model and year, in NHTSA’s spelling of the model: when that differs from vPIC’s, the page says so, shows what it matched and why, and lets you choose. Complaints are unverified reports, and a count is not a rate.

NHTSA sends every complaint for a model in one answer: the 2003 Honda Accord’s was about 2 MB when read on 28 September 2026, so allow it a few seconds. NHTSA says vPIC is subject to automated traffic rate control; a burst of lookups may be refused, and the panel will say so. fueleconomy.gov starts at model year 1984, names makes and models its own way, and rates vehicles up to 10,000 lb, so a heavy truck or a bus is not in it. Nothing here is legal, mechanical or buying advice, and nothing here is a vehicle history report.

Your VIN

It is sent to one host, NHTSA’s own vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov, to be decoded. The recall, complaint and model-name reads go to api.nhtsa.gov and the fuel economy reads to www.fueleconomy.gov; they carry only the make, model and year, never the VIN. No request goes through labs.llc, nothing is logged here, and the VIN is never written into this page’s address, so it is not in your history, a shared link or the site’s analytics — which records that the tool was used, never what was typed. The VIN is not stored in your browser either; reload and it is gone.

Links: “Copy a link to this model” puts the year, make and model after a # — never the VIN. An older link from drive.com.im that carried a VIN after a # (#vin=…, made only when its reader pressed the button that said so) still opens here: the page reads it, takes it out of the address bar at once, and decodes it. This page makes no such links.

One hand-over, and it is not storage: a VIN typed into the lookup on Recall can be brought here by the link Recall offers. It travels in that browser tab’s session storage, never in an address; this page deletes it as it reads it, puts it in the field and waits for you to press Decode.

To see it for yourself, open your browser’s developer tools, choose the Network tab and press Decode: the requests are there, and so are their destinations.

Charging

The charging stations that drive.com.im searched are the same OpenStreetMap register as Cybertaxi’s charger search, where how it was harvested is set out, and Cybertaxi’s method page says what it can and cannot tell you.

Questions and corrections: labs@labs.llc.

Sources, and when each was read

The sources of this page and its two by-model pages, and when each was read
SourceUsed forRead
NHTSA vPIC API
vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov		Decoding a VIN; asked live by your browser. vPIC is populated from what manufacturers submit under Part 565.Documentation read 28 September 2026
NHTSA recalls and complaints APIs
api.nhtsa.gov		Recall campaigns, owner complaints, and the year, make and model lists; asked live.28 September 2026
NHTSA, “Check for Recalls”What NHTSA’s VIN lookup shows and does not show; what a recall is.28 September 2026
NHTSA, “Report a Safety Problem”How a complaint is filed; the hotline number.28 September 2026
fueleconomy.gov web services
www.fueleconomy.gov		The EPA’s fuel economy and its menus; asked live. What each field means is from its documentation.Documentation read 28 September 2026
49 CFR Part 565
ecfr.gov		The structure of a VIN, the check digit and its worked example, the model-year codes.28 September 2026, in the text up to date as of 24 September 2026
ISO, “WMI Country Code Distribution”
standards.iso.org, the ISO 3780 codes		The region the first character names.28 September 2026, the chart revised 13 April 2021
Wikipedia, “Vehicle identification number”The trade names WMI, VDS and VIS; where the check digit is compulsory. (ISO 3779 itself sits behind ISO’s terms and was not read.)28 September 2026, revision of 27 September 2026