NHTSA Manufacturer Communications Change API

Normalize the public NHTSA manufacturer communications feed into product-level, machine-readable records. Designed for fleet software, repair networks, and automotive intelligence agents that need a repeatable feed of manufacturer bulletins, service campaigns, warranty extensions, and other communications.

What it does

Reads the current NHTSA 2025–2026 manufacturer communications TSV flat file, filters by make/model/model year and NHTSA file-added date, collapses duplicate component rows, and returns stable record keys and content fingerprints. Pass previous key/hash pairs with changesOnly: true to detect records that are new to your baseline or whose content has changed.

A manufacturer communication is not necessarily a recall. This tool does not determine VIN applicability or certify that a vehicle is safe. NHTSA updates its public files periodically; the Actor does not claim real-time data.

Example input

{"make":"Ford","addedSince":"2026-01-01","maxResults":10}

Output

One dataset item per matched product-level communication. Each item contains NHTSA identifier, manufacturer document ID, make/model/year, communication and file-added dates, communication type, summary, component systems, stable key, fingerprint, and changeType. A SUMMARY record in the default key-value store records source freshness, counts, truncation, and errors.

Change detection

The first run returns NOT_COMPARED (not falsely labeled new). Store the returned key and fingerprint pairs. On later runs pass previousFingerprints and changesOnly: true. New keys become NEW_TO_BASELINE; changed hashes become CHANGED; identical records are omitted.

Coverage and limitations

This release covers the NHTSA 2025–2026 received-date archive, not all historical years. addedSince filters the date added to the flat file; it is not the bulletin's original publication date. The source can include multiple rows per communication/product/component; this Actor normalizes them into one product-level record. Source schema changes fail visibly rather than silently emitting wrong fields. The full bulletin PDF is not extracted.

Official sources: NHTSA Datasets and APIs and its TSBS.txt field dictionary. The data are public government records, not advice, warranty coverage, recall status, or a substitute for manufacturer service information.