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VIN: The 17-character code that runs the automotive world
- ars 1y agoSomething the article sort of implies but in an unclear way - do vehicles sold in other countries still get assigned a VIN?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- monster_truck 1y agoIt's an ISO standard that differs by country, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number
- stasdev 1y agoYes, country of manufacture is part of the VIN
- dhosek 1y agoCountry 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 1y agoMy Japanese "VIN" is 10 digits, but they can be from 9-12 characters.
- dhosek 1y agoYeah, while digging further (but after my anti-procrastination filter locked me out) I saw that Japanese numbers for domestic consumption (and some limited exports, e.g., to Oceania) don’t follow the VIN system.
- kesslern 1y agoJapanese Domestic Market cars have a chassis number instead of a VIN. It serves the same purpose, but a different format.
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- mrheosuper 1y agoThere is AI smell in this article. I think it's "The system's elegant constraints" part, way too similar to AI's writing.
- Nav_Panel 1y agoYeah. I noticed a lot of "It's not just X. It's Y." which is the biggest tell for me.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoThe term “not just” doesn’t appear in the text.
- selcuka 1y agoI think it was a simplified example. The exact text is: > What emerged wasn't just a unique identifier. It was a compressed database record
- morcus 1y agoIs this itself an AI generated comment? The word "just" appears 1 time in the article.
- grues-dinner 1y agoI 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.
- galaxy_gas 1y agoIt's AI slop and undisclosed self promotion for an "AI startup"
- throwaway202508 1y agoThis 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 None of these are correct. S = Model S X = Model X 3 = Model 3 Y = Model Y
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- 1a527dd5 1y agoI 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.
- throw0101d 1y agoIt would be nice if a similar global system/format existed for bicycles to better help deal with tracking theft.