How We Make CarTold

Where the data comes from

• NHTSA (U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration): recall campaigns, owner complaints, defect investigations, manufacturer communications such as service bulletins, and NCAP crash-test ratings.
• EPA, via fueleconomy.gov: fuel economy (MPG) figures for each variant.
• EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration): weekly retail fuel prices, used for the fuel-cost estimates.

How often it is refreshed

Imports run automatically on our server on a fixed schedule:

• Recalls and owner complaints: daily.
• Investigations, manufacturer communications, crash-test ratings, EPA fuel economy and EIA fuel prices: weekly.

Each model-year report shows the date its records were last imported. A record that a source has published but that we have not yet imported will not appear until the next run.

How the pages are written

Model-year reports are generated from the stored records with fixed rules. Counts, rankings, the most-reported components, year-over-year changes and fuel-cost estimates are calculated directly from the data, and a sentence is shown only when the data behind it supports it. We do not road-test or inspect vehicles, and we publish no reliability score. Model-year pages do not use AI-written text; see our AI policy.

Owner complaints are unverified

Complaints are reports that owners submitted to NHTSA. NHTSA does not verify them, and neither do we. The short owner quotes we show are taken from those reports, shortened and with all-capital text set in normal case; reports that contain personal details or profanity are skipped. A high complaint count is a reason to check a car more closely, not proof that a particular car is faulty.

Report an error

If a figure, record or sentence looks wrong, email [email protected] with the page link and what you think is wrong. See also our corrections page.

Who we are

CarTold is owned and operated by Norbin AS, a Norwegian company. Pages are credited to the CarTold Editorial Team. More about CarTold.