VIN: The 17-character code that runs the automotive world
21 comments
·August 7, 2025throwaway202508
This article isn't even correct. 5YJ3 is the code for model 3. Not F.
Position 4 (3) - Vehicle Line:
1 = Model S
3 = Model Y
7 = Model X
F = Model 3
ars
Something the article sort of implies but in an unclear way - do vehicles sold in other countries still get assigned a VIN?
monster_truck
It's an ISO standard that differs by country, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number
kesslern
Japanese Domestic Market cars have a chassis number instead of a VIN. It serves the same purpose, but a different format.
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stasdev
Yes, country of manufacture is part of the VIN
dhosek
Country of manufacture does not necessarily equal country of sale.
That said, while some details differ, the 17-character codes are largely compatible across standards although it seems that the check digit is unique to the US market.
ranger_danger
My Japanese "VIN" is 10 digits, but they can be from 9-12 characters.
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throw0101d
It would be nice if a similar global system/format existed for bicycles to better help deal with tracking theft.
mrheosuper
There is AI smell in this article. I think it's "The system's elegant constraints" part, way too similar to AI's writing.
netsharc
It's also wrong/limited to US-manufactured cars. The 2nd and 3rd letter outside of the North America doesn't follow the convention of country, and manufacturer.
For example Alfa Romeo has Z, followed by AR; Fiat has ZFA. German-made BMWs (as opposed to US-made ones) have WB...
galaxy_gas
It's AI slop and undisclosed self promotion for an "AI startup"
Nav_Panel
Yeah. I noticed a lot of "It's not just X. It's Y." which is the biggest tell for me.
grues-dinner
I think that is extremely common in adverts (most famously here, the M&S "It's not just bread. It's our stone-baked, hand-shaped artisanally-molested bread"), and narrative media like that distinctive kind of journalism written like a storybook, and which (I think) then bled into popular media like true-crime podcasts: "It wasn't just Tuesday. It was the last Tuesday he would ever see. <intro music>".
Also this kind of short sentence construction is used in the incredibly annoying and pervasive style of headlines for opinion pieces: X is Y. And it's Z. (where Z is often "not OK" or "OK").
I assume all this overuse is where LLMs picked it up and weighted it highly.
morcus
Is this itself an AI generated comment? The word "just" appears 1 time in the article.
JumpCrisscross
The term “not just” doesn’t appear in the text.
selcuka
I think it was a simplified example. The exact text is:
> What emerged wasn't just a unique identifier. It was a compressed database record
null
I happen to work in this world, and it is much much worse than this.
CAP codes are white space sensitive, they often have leading whitespaces. So you need to store " PINGPONG", but if you store "PINGPONG" then you are going to be a in world of hurt.
Then each manufacturer has their own code (e.g BMW has IVS, Stellantis has titre and so on).
Then there are mapping files between CAP and manufacturer specific code.
Then manufacturers often need to quickly react to new models being available so you get things like overrides, which is literally a string replace "OO" with "XX" and that makes it into a "electric diesel".
Then along side CAP codes, you other industry codes (e.g. Glasses, HPI).
And they _ALL_ need to interact with each other.
It sounds like a fun problem to solve, it isn't. You basically become a glorified data mangler.