Government-authoritative · No driver PII · DPPA-clear

Where our vehicle data actually comes from.

Every figure traces back to an authoritative public source — EPA fueleconomy.gov, NHTSA (recalls, complaints, service bulletins, NCAP, vPIC), the U.S. Coast Guard (boat builder codes and recalls), the EIA (fuel and electricity prices) and New York and Washington state open data — cleaned and cross-referenced by VehDB. No driver, owner or registration PII. No DPPA-regulated data.

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Coverage: 1,342,720 records · 853,870 cars · 76,435 with EPA economy.

provenance
# Every field carries its origin
{ "mpg_combined": 28,
  "co2_gpm": 322,
  "source": "EPA fueleconomy.gov" }
{ "open_recalls": 2,
  "source": "NHTSA (live)" }
# What you will NOT find
PII → none · no owner, no title records, no DPPA data

Our sources

Authoritative public datasets, plus VehDB's own cleaning and cross-referencing.

Source What we use License & cadence
EPA — fueleconomy.gov Fuel economy (city/highway/combined MPG), annual fuel cost, CO₂ grams/mile, greenhouse-gas score, EV range. U.S. public domain · refreshed on new model-year publication
NHTSA — Recalls Recall campaigns by vehicle — component, summary, remedy and campaign number, from a mirror of the official NHTSA recall file. U.S. public domain · mirrored; last sync on the status page
NHTSA — ODI complaints Owner complaints aggregated per make, model, model year and component — counts with crash, fire, injury and death flags. No narratives, no complainant data. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically; last sync on the status page
NHTSA — Manufacturer communications Technical service bulletins, service campaigns, warranty extensions (special coverage) and over-the-air updates manufacturers file with NHTSA, by make, model, model year and component, 1995 onward. Summaries as filed; the documents stay at NHTSA. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
NHTSA — Tire recall notices Production windows, DOT plant codes and tire sizes read from NHTSA tire recall texts, for the DOT check and tire size pages. U.S. public domain · rebuilt with every recall sync
NHTSA — FARS Census of fatal crashes: vehicles involved by make, model and model year, exact counts, 2020 onward. U.S. public domain · refreshed when NHTSA publishes a year
NHTSA — CRSS Weighted sample of police-reported crashes of every severity, aggregated to national estimates by make, model and model year, 2016 onward. Kept separate from FARS. U.S. public domain · refreshed when NHTSA publishes a year
EPA — Test Car List Dynamometer test configurations: rated horsepower, test weight, axle ratio, gears, raw city/highway results. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
EPA — Green Vehicle Guide Smog rating (1–10) and SmartWay designation per model. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
EPA — Automotive Trends Per-carline CAFE production volumes, horsepower and label economy. U.S. public domain · per model year release
NHTSA — vPIC tire plant codes DOT plant code → tire plant, maker and country. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
NHTSA — NCAP Crash-test ratings — overall, frontal, side and rollover stars. U.S. public domain · read live
NHTSA — vPIC Vehicle product information catalog — make, model and engine ids linked to every catalogue row, VIN decoding. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
EPA — Motorcycle certification Highway and off-road motorcycle emissions certification: engine displacement, cylinders, rated power and rpm, transmission and gears, matched to catalogue motorcycles by engine family. U.S. public domain · refreshed per model year
U.S. Coast Guard — Manufacturer codes Manufacturer Identification Codes (the first three characters of a HIN) with the builder's name, location and in- and out-of-business dates. No officials or phone numbers stored. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
U.S. Coast Guard — Boat recalls Recall campaigns by builder code: model, model year, problem, HIN range, units and disposition, linked to catalogue boat makes. U.S. public domain · refreshed periodically
EIA — Fuel and electricity prices Weekly retail gasoline (regular, midgrade, premium) and diesel for states, regions and the U.S.; monthly electricity prices by state and sector from the Electric Power Monthly. U.S. public domain · weekly and monthly
New York State DMV — Inspections and registrations Safety and emissions inspections since August 2021 (about 63 million) and current registrations: annual miles, inspection fail rates, curb weight and vehicles on the road per make, model and model year; boats registered per builder code; and each VIN's own inspection record (dates, odometer readings, results). The state publishes no owner data in these files. Open data under the OPEN-NY terms (data.ny.gov) · weekly at the source, refreshed monthly
Washington State DOL — Electric vehicles Plug-in title transactions that state a sale price, and plug-ins registered in Washington: new and used price quartiles by sale year, with registration counts, per make, model and model year. Open Database License (ODbL) · our aggregates are free to download at vehdb.com/data/washington-ev-prices
Natural Resources Canada Fuel consumption ratings for the Canadian market — L/100 km, CO₂ and smog ratings, BEV range and charge time. Open Government Licence – Canada · refreshed periodically
VehDB — Cleaning & cross-referencing Normalization, deduplication, UUID assignment, and tire fitment geometry linking specs to compatible tire sizes. Provided under your VehDB plan · continuous

Base URL: https://api.vehdb.com/v1

From raw government data to one clean catalog

The authoritative source is the floor. The cross-referencing is the value.

Cleaned & normalized

Inconsistent make/model spellings, units and fuel-type labels across federal datasets are reconciled into one consistent schema you can query reliably.

Cross-referenced on one UUID

Specs, EPA economy, live recalls and tire fitment for a vehicle all hang off a single stable UUID — no second lookup, no fuzzy joins on your side.

PII-free by design

We only ingest vehicle and public safety, economy and state open data. No owner or driver information ever enters the system — nothing DPPA-regulated.

For compliance teams

Provenance is a compliance advantage

Insurers, lenders and compliance teams need to prove where data came from. Because VehDB derives from government-authoritative sources and carries no PII and no DPPA-regulated data, you can adopt it without the privacy review that consumer-data vendors trigger. See how it fits compliance and insurance workflows.

Evaluate VehDB for business

Data sources FAQ

Provenance, compliance and update cadence.

VehDB sources data from government-authoritative public datasets: the EPA's fueleconomy.gov for fuel economy, CO₂ and greenhouse-gas figures, and NHTSA for recall campaigns, NCAP crash-test ratings and vPIC vehicle decoding. VehDB then cleans, normalizes and cross-references these into a single UUID-addressed catalog, and adds tire fitment geometry.
No. VehDB contains vehicle specifications and public safety, economy and state open data only. There is no driver, owner or registration PII, and no DPPA-regulated personal data. The one per-VIN record is New York's public inspection log (inspection dates, odometer readings and results, which the state publishes without owner data); we do not provide ownership or title records.
Recalls come from our mirror of the official NHTSA recall file and NCAP ratings from NHTSA's ratings service. Specifications and EPA fuel economy are refreshed as the underlying government datasets publish new model-year data. The status page shows when each dataset was last synced.
The underlying EPA and NHTSA datasets are U.S. government works in the public domain. VehDB's cleaning, cross-referencing and tire fitment geometry are provided to you under your VehDB plan. For insurers, lenders and compliance teams, government-authoritative provenance with no PII is an advantage, not a liability.

See how we compare to raw NHTSA vPIC, or read the vehicle data for business guide.

Authoritative sources. No PII. 1,342,720 records.

EPA economy, live NHTSA recalls and NCAP, plus VehDB cleaning and tire fitment — provenance you can put in front of a compliance team. Free tier: 100 calls/mo, no card.

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