What Car Is This - Recognize Any Vehicle with AI

Hey Product Hunt! 👋 I'm Dmitriy, creator of What Car Is This Today I'm launching a browser extension that identifies vehicle makes and models from photos. Whether it's a marketplace listing, a social media post, or a random image online, the extension helps you quickly determine what vehicle you're looking at. 🔍 How it works You can analyze vehicles in several ways: * Upload an image from your computer * Paste an image URL * Use the extension on images you encounter while browsing * Analyze photos from virtually any website 🧪 What I learned while building it One of the most interesting discoveries during development was that vehicle recognition is much less straightforward than it initially appears. Over the last few years, the number of Chinese vehicles on the road has exploded. However, many popular vision models still struggle with them. I found a surprising pattern: Models trained primarily on Western datasets often perform poorly on Chinese brands. Models with strong coverage of Chinese manufacturers can underperform on European, American, and Japanese vehicles. Some models excel at premium brands but struggle with newer manufacturers. Others can identify heavily occluded vehicles but make mistakes on visually similar models. For example, a model that confidently recognizes a BYD, Zeekr, or Li Auto may fail on a niche European vehicle, while another model shows exactly the opposite behavior. 🤖 Why there's an ensemble under the hood These observations led me to an important conclusion: no single model consistently performs best across all vehicle categories. Instead of relying on one model, the extension uses an ensemble approach. This significantly improves robustness across different markets, manufacturers, image qualities, and viewing conditions. 🎯 More than just clean photos During testing, I was pleasantly surprised by how often the system could identify vehicles from challenging images: 1. Cars in the background 2. Partially hidden vehicles 3. Low-resolution photos 4. Unusual viewing angles 5. Crowded street scenes Of course, no recognition system is perfect, but combining multiple specialized models has proven far more reliable than using a single one. 🛠️ Built for people who work with cars This extension is useful for: * Automotive enthusiasts * Vehicle researchers * Marketplace analysts * Insurance and fleet professionals * Journalists and investigators * Anyone curious about cars they encounter online Happy spotting! 🚗✨