What is in it, where it came from, and what it is not
Every figure on this site is traceable to a federal record or a manufacturer document. This page says which, how often each one moves, and where the coverage stops.
Where each field comes from
| Layer | Source | Refresh | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel economy, engines, configurations | U.S. EPA certification records | Weekly | Every model year |
| Recalls, defect text, build windows, completion rates | NHTSA, including 49 CFR 573 filings | Nightly | Every model year |
| Owner complaints, failure mileage | NHTSA complaint database | Nightly | Every model year |
| Crash ratings | NHTSA New Car Assessment Program | As published | Rated model years only |
| Service bulletins and campaigns | NHTSA manufacturer communications | Nightly | Most model years |
| Diagnostic trouble codes | WhichTrim, derived from the federal record | With the build | Where the record supports one |
| Engine, plant, filed equipment | NHTSA vehicle product information | Monthly | Most model years |
| Trim specs, equipment, MSRP | The manufacturer's own press kit or newsroom spec sheet | On publication | 53 model years so far |
| Fuel, diesel and electricity prices | U.S. Energy Information Administration | Weekly / monthly | All 50 states and DC |
| Public EV charging sites | Federal alternative-fuel station register | With the build | All 50 states and DC |
Every page also publishes the JSON it was built from, so none of this has to be taken on trust. The methodology page has the arithmetic.
What this is not
Stated here rather than left for you to discover. A dataset is only as useful as its edges are clear.
Coverage starts at 2016.
U.S.-market cars, trucks and SUVs only. There is no page for a 2009 Accord and we would rather say so than build a thin one.
Complaints are unverified, and they scale with sales.
They are what owners told NHTSA, not adjudicated defects. A best-seller will always show more of them than a rare car with the same problem, which is why they are never folded into the Safety Signal grade.
A recall covers a build range, not a model year.
Nothing on this site — and nothing in the public record — can tell you whether one specific vehicle is affected. Only a VIN check at nhtsa.gov/recalls settles that, and every page that mentions a recall says so.
Trim-level specs exist only where a press kit does.
Manufacturer trim data exists for 53 model years. The rest have EPA and NHTSA data, plus the equipment the manufacturer filed with vPIC. A page tells you which it is showing you.
We hold no ownership, title, odometer or accident history.
Not a little of it — none. That is a different industry with different licences, and a dataset that guesses at it is worse than one that does not have it.
Nine states have their own gasoline price. The rest are regional.
That is what EIA publishes, so every regional figure on the site is marked as one rather than presented as a state price.
What we commit to
Every value names its source.
Not a bibliography at the bottom — the record each number came from, next to the number, on the page. It is the reason this page can be short.
A public safety record is never behind a payment.
Every recall, complaint and crash rating on this site is free to read and always will be. What a paid plan buys is the watching, the joins and the delivery — never access to a record the public already owns.
We never store or publish a full VIN.
Where NHTSA's complaint data carries one, it is truncated to the nine characters that describe the configuration before anything is written down. The check digit, plant code and serial are dropped, so nothing here identifies a vehicle or the person who complained.
No personal data is sold. There is nothing to sell.
We hold your name, email, sign-in id and usage counts, and that is the whole list. It is not for sale at any price and never will be.
When a source is wrong, we inherit it — and say so.
We do not silently correct federal records. Every page links the JSON it was built from so you can see exactly what we read, and the build re-reads the sources daily.
What you may do with it
Read it, quote it, cite it. Build on it on a paid plan. The federal records underneath are public domain and yours already; the joins, grades, transcriptions and identifiers are ours and licensed to you for the life of your plan.
If you are publishing a figure from here, the attribution we ask for is one line: Data: WhichTrim, from EPA and NHTSA public records.
The underlying federal records are public domain and we claim nothing in them. The compiled dataset — its selection, structure and arrangement, together with the derived fields, grades, transcriptions and identifiers created by WhichTrim — is our proprietary work product. A plan licenses its use; it does not transfer ownership, and it does not permit extracting the dataset to build a substitute for it.
Questions buyers actually ask
Source: EPA, NHTSA and our own buildCan I use this commercially?
Yes, on a paid plan, inside your own product or analysis — see the API terms for the exact wording. The free plan is for non-commercial use and asks for attribution. What no plan allows is reselling the dataset itself or using it to build a substitute feed.
Where does the federal data end and yours begin?
The records are public domain and you do not need us to get them. Everything between those records and what you see here — the joined dataset, the grading, the transcriptions, the derived fields and the identifiers — is WhichTrim's own work product, and it is what a plan licenses.
How current is it?
The site rebuilds daily against the current federal files, and every page carries the timestamp it was generated at. Manufacturer figures can lag a mid-year change, because they are only as current as the document the manufacturer published.
What happens if I find something wrong?
Check the JSON linked at the foot of the page first — it shows exactly what we read. If we misread it, that is ours to fix. If the source is wrong, we will not quietly overwrite a federal record, but we will say so on the page.
Is there an uptime commitment?
Business plans carry a 99.9% monthly uptime target with service credits. The static JSON twins of every page are served from a CDN and have no practical rate limit.