F.A.Q. & important info

About me & history of Car Database

Teoalida’s Car Database was born from a major hobby for automobiles and pleasure for working in Excel and data analysis. It is one of MANY hobbies started during childhood and one of the FEW hobbies turning into business during adulthood.

This is mostly 1-man business. I (Teoalida) do data entry, web scraping, database updates, design my website, and also customer support via chat every day. I employ other people just for coding certain scrapers too complex for me.

After years of dedication I became the biggest data provider in automobile industry, given by numerous car databases offered for various regions of world, complete, accurate and frequently updated, plus other databases about geography, real estate and electronic products.

Can I get a free car database?

Database prices reflect my efforts researching automotive industry since 2003, compiling quality databases and keeping them up-to-date, plus offering daily customer support.

Databases are targeting commercial use, each year few hundreds companies, programmers and web developers, paying BIG $$ to ensure getting a complete vehicle database, frequently updated and with accurate technical specs. You can also use database for personal use, data analysis, machine learning, academic, etc, but need to purchase at same price like commercial entities.

Stay away from websites offering “complete” databases for FREE download, they are most likely stolen and posted online by other people than original author, or made by careless students who needed only a bunch of data for their studies, such databases are incomplete, contain errors, are outdated, no support or updates are provided. Using databases downloaded freely may destroy your company reputation.

List of car database updates (change log)

Teoalida’s Car Database is the MOST UPDATED database ever existed. Rarely is passing a week without adding +1 model or changing something in one of databases. Here I summarize updates by month.

(only major updates are listed here, which takes more than 1 day and are done every few months. India car database is updated on 1st day of every month so is not listed here).

America vs Europe vs rest of world

If you are a business working globally rather than in a specific country, or working in some other country than the countries covered by my standard car databases, you may be looking for a global car database.

But… this is not really possible. Car specifications vary depending by country of sale for models having same name, and for accuracy reasons, a car database should be specific to cars SOLD in one country, or with some compromise of quality, to one continent.

Pricing

I offer various packages such as no specs / basic specs / 2000-present / new cars only at cheaper price for people who do not need old cars or too many specs.

Car photo database

In 2015 I started using web scraping software to quickly create databases extracting data from various websites. Scraping software do not extract only text (model names and specifications) but also Image URLs (link to image corresponding to each car model, usually in same resolution).

Do you provide PHP scripts?

Because of large number of databases that I am selling, and because each customer have different requirements in integrating my database in his website, there is not possible to make ONE plugin and give it to every customer purchasing a database.

Several free plugins for WordPress do exist (example WooCommerce YMM search) but it can be used only for online stores made with WooCommerce and the only car database that works with it is the Year-Make-Model.

Interoperability with other products

As an independent data provider, I do not guarantee interoperability of my databases with other products available online. Actually there is no interoperability between my own car databases, each one being developed independently from different source.

Most common conflicts are at BMW and Mercedes, some show model “BMW 3-Series saloon” with trim/variant “320i”, others shows model “320i” with trim/variant “saloon, touring, coupe, cabrio”, etc, others shows model simply “3-Series” with trim/variant “320i saloon”, and some of those who show 3-Series as model put M3 as separate model instead of a trim/variant under 3-Series.

How often do you update databases?

Dedicating most of my life on data providing industry, I managed to provide the most updated databases ever sold on internet. Proof: List of updates.

The greatest thing is that in case of databases made using an automated scraping script that takes less than 24 hours to run, you can request anytime to have database updated today free of charge. Once a customer request update and it is done, all existing customers will be notified to download latest update.

How do I receive updates?

I use Easy Digital Downloads plugin for WordPress to generate database download links after payment, I set the links to expire in 1 year, and you can click your link again as many times you want to download latest version of database.

Moreover, after every update of each database, I click “resend receipt” in WordPress dashboard to each customer, and you receive a new email that reminds you that a new update is released.

Do you provide other formats beside Excel? (CSV, SQL, XML, JSON)

Anyone can convert XLS to SQL: open .XLS file, do the necessary changes in Excel > save as > choose CSV format > go in your website cPanel > phpMyAdmin > create a MySQL database > import CSV file.

Starting from 2015 I provide CSV and SQL by default for small databases (Car Models List, Car Nameplates List, Year-Make-Model) at no extra charges (pay once and receive 3 file formats). I can provide for bigger databases at request.

Do you offer refunds?

If you buy a physical product from a real store, you can return it to store undamaged and get refund. But in case of digital car databases, returning is not possible. Since starting selling in 2012, as 2017 I done over 1000 sales and had only 3 or 4 cases of people asking for refunds. If any customer report problems I always choose to fix the problem rather than refunding, until every customer is satisfied.

What is the source of data?

The original databases I made for Europe (Car Models Encyclopedia, Car Models Database, Car Models & Engines Database) were made by entering data manually from AutoKatalog, a yearly publication made by Auto Motor und Sport, the leading German car magazine and one of the most reputable car magazines in the world. AutoKatalog is published yearly since 1957 in about 15-20 European countries.

VIN – Vehicle Identification Number

List of updatesBeen contacted by a lot of people asking for VIN database so I am getting interested in providing such type of data, BUT… VIN is unique per car and not per model so what I should do? A table with over 1 billion rows? (that is the number of cars currently driving around in the worlds). Australia Car Database SAMPLE.xls you can see column X with partial VIN. While this may be sufficient for certain applications, it may be not sufficient for a VIN decoding service.

Anyone looking for VIN database, please give me a SAMPLE database with few rows for few cars so I can understand how would you like the data to be formatted, and we will see if I can do the same for ALL cars!