If you work for a car dealership, a security force, or you’re part of a court, you will find this article very useful. There’s a way to find a lot of information about every vehicle in the US, by just verifying the license plate. Keep reading! We’ll show you how.
A lot of cars, a huge database
Some reports estimate there are more than 1.446 billion cars riding across the world as of 2022. There are companies producing new models and categories of cars, like the Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), electric cars or some other concepts. It’s not gonna stop soon, and there is already a vehicle for each person in the United States.
Try to dimension the difficulty of determining a price when someone tries to buy or sell one of them. Or the perks of suffering a theft or an accident, and not knowing who hit you. When a parking lot needs to strengthen its security, it’s impossible to think of analogical systems, paper notebooks on every car that gets in.
Even license plates are outdated! Of course, it may help in registering and identifying a distinct car that can be traced whenever necessary. But the database can become irrelevant if the owner sells the car. The issue demanded a standard, uniform, and always-updated way to track vehicles. Because of this, some governments introduced a code for registering vehicles to increase security. In the United States, this code is known as the Vehicle Identification Number.
17 characters can provide the whole vehicle history report, as a proof of previous owners, accidents, and repairs. Security forces and law enforcement organizations can use it to find stolen cars, recalls, registrations, warranty claims, thefts, and insurance coverage. As a DNA sequence and a passport for a person, it functions in conjunction with the license plate. Every truck, every van, and every motorcycle started to have this ID on 1981, but not all of them are accessible to the public.
Still on the same spot: how to get the VIN?
You don’t have to go to a state agency to request them. Every company can now access a program like Get VIN License Plate API. It’s a nice technological aid to solve the mystery, that gained a lot of popularity in recent years. This API works in all 50 states of the United States, with vehicles such as cars, vans, motorcycles, trucks. Zyla Labs developers designed it, and you can use it in just five steps:
- 1: subscribe to Zyla Labs’ services. Find the transparent pricing on their website and choose what better suits your wallet.
- 2: they will assign an API key for you. It’s a string of characters for each client that enrolls, that grants access to the endpoint.
- 3: Take the bearer token and include it in the header, to authenticate the decoder API.
- 4: Insert only the license plate and make the request of the Vehicle Identification Number.
- 5: The server will not only deliver the VIN of the license plate requested, but also additional information like the motor, supplier, and model of vehicle.
If you need more information, you can integrate this API with another one, to increase the amount of information about each vehicle. Go check it out!