How many combinations are there for a vin?

Answer 1

Technically, a VIN has a number of permuations not combinations because the order is going to matter. So how many permutations are possible?

Well, the VIN code is 17 digits long starting about 1980 so I am assuming we are talking about a 17 digit VIN. Also note that it is possible to put all alphabetical characters in each digit except for I, O, and Q which are not allowed by regulation. This fact means that there are a possible 26 - 3 = 23 alphabetical characters and 10 (0 - 9) numerical digits that could be used as a VIN digit representation. This knowledge tells us that we have a base of 33 using simple addition (23 letters + 10 integers.) Now it will first appear that we have 17 spots in the VIN to place one of our 33 possible digits. However, in the 17 digit VIN, there is a check digit in the 9th positionthat is dependent on the rest of the VIN. Therefore it will not affect the number of permuations that the VIN can have. So we take our base 33 and raise it to the power of 16 to get 33^16 which gives us a grand total of 1977985201462558877634081 possible representations.