Pull EPA-tested MPG and emissions data for a specific vehicle trim using the fueleconomy.gov Web Services API
domain: fueleconomy.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Walk the cascading menu endpoints under /ws/rest/vehicle/menu/year, then /make?year=, /model?year=&make=, and /options?year=&make=&model= to resolve a year/make/model down to a specific EPA vehicle ID.
Call /ws/rest/vehicle/{id} to retrieve the full fuel economy record (city/highway/combined MPG, annual fuel cost, CO2 emissions) for that ID.
For hybrids and plug-in EVs, check the fuelType1/fuelType2 and related combined-mode fields since dual-fuel vehicles report split values.
Use /ws/rest/vehicle/menu/options with an explicit transmission/drive filter when a single year/make/model resolves to multiple trims with different powertrains.
No API key or auth header is required; requests are plain unauthenticated GET returning XML (or JSON depending on the Accept header).
Known gotchas
The dataset only covers EPA-tested configurations back to model year 1984 — obscure trims, fleet-only configs, or mid-year running changes may not have a matching ID.
There is no published rate limit or SLA since this is a free public-data endpoint, not a commercial API; build in retry/backoff and don't rely on it for high-volume production traffic without your own caching layer.
Data is year/make/model/trim based, not VIN-based — you must map a VIN to those fields yourself (e.g., via NHTSA vPIC) before querying.
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