Lifan VIN Decoder

Decode any Lifan VIN free in seconds. Enter the 17-character vehicle identification number from your Lifan into the decoder above and get the model, year, and body style it was built with, to the extent that information is available for this brand.

This page is the Lifan VIN hub: what’s known about Lifan’s WMI codes, a position-by-position guide to reading a Lifan VIN, where to find the VIN on the vehicle, and an honest explanation of Lifan’s genuinely complicated corporate history, because the company that built an older Lifan car is not really the same company today.
A quick note on market coverage and company status: Lifan passenger cars have never been sold new in the United States, and there is no NHTSA registration for a Lifan-badged car. Lifan-branded small engines, generators, and go-karts do sell in the US market, which is a separate business from the Chinese passenger-car brand and shows up differently in federal records, as explained below. Lifan’s corporate history since 2020 involves a bankruptcy reorganization, two subsequent renamings, and a split between its passenger-car operations and its still-active motorcycle business. Where sourcing on a detail is thin or conflicting, this page says so rather than guessing.

About Lifan, and its complicated current status

Lifan Group was founded in 1992 in Chongqing by Yin Mingshan, starting as a small motorcycle-engine operation. It grew into complete motorcycles, became one of China’s largest private motorcycle makers by the mid-2000s, then expanded into buses around 2003 and passenger cars from 2005: the Lifan 320 city car, the 520 and 620 sedans (the 620 exported as the Solano), the X60 and X80 SUVs, and later a battery-electric model, the 650EV. Lifan listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in late 2010 under ticker 601777.
The central fact about a Lifan-badged passenger car today: the company that built it has been through bankruptcy, changed owners, and changed its name twice since 2020, and no longer builds passenger cars under the Lifan brand for the Chinese market. By 2019, Lifan’s debts had reached roughly 31 billion yuan, most due within a year; car sales collapsed, and in the first half of 2020 the automaker sold only 978 cars, down about 95%. That August, Lifan’s controlling shareholder filed for court-supervised bankruptcy reorganization to avoid liquidation and delisting. New investors were approved that year, Geely Maijie Investment (Geely Holding Group) and Chongqing Liangjiang Equity Investment Fund (the local Chongqing government), who together paid roughly 3 billion yuan for a controlling stake. In January 2021 the company was renamed Lifan Technology and pivoted to new-energy vehicles built around battery-swap technology for ride-hailing and fleet customers.
Late in 2021, Lifan Technology and Geely Auto formed a 50:50 joint venture, Ruilan Auto, registered January 2022, which now builds the battery-swap EVs made at Lifan’s former factories under the Ruilan and Maple Leaf names rather than the Lifan marque. Lifan’s combustion-era models were discontinued in China by around 2023, and Lifan Technology’s domestic role shifted to contract manufacturing for Ruilan. In 2024, Yin Qi, a co-founder of the AI company Megvii, bought a 19.91% stake and became second-largest shareholder, steering the company toward an “AI plus vehicle” strategy centered on autonomous driving. Early in 2025 the company was renamed again, to Qianli Technology (same 601777 stock code); Mercedes-Benz reportedly invested roughly 1.3 billion yuan in it that September.

Two things complicate a clean “Lifan is defunct” summary. Its motorcycle business is separate and still active under the Lifan name, alongside a newer powersports brand, PFMoto, and Lifan still sells small engines and power equipment under its own name, the version most familiar to US buyers. And wholesale export listings we found as of 2026 still advertise Lifan-badged combustion SUVs and sedans, models like X3 Pro and X6 Pro, for markets such as Algeria; we could not confirm officially whether that reflects ongoing production or leftover inventory, so treat it as unconfirmed. What we can say with confidence: Lifan is no longer an independent passenger-car brand building new models for its home market, and the entity that owns its former factories is now focused on autonomous-driving technology and EVs sold under other names.

Lifan WMI codes (positions 1-3)

The first three characters of a VIN, the World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI), identify who built the vehicle and where, under the ISO 3780 standard. We checked NHTSA’s vPIC manufacturer database directly, and it does return results for “Lifan,” but none of them cover passenger cars:

That last entry is the source of most Lifan-branded products Americans actually encounter: go-kart and minibike engines, generators, and small power equipment sold under the Lifan name, plus low-speed and utility vehicles. None of these three WMIs apply to a full highway passenger car of the kind built in China as a Lifan 320, X60, or Solano. We could not find a confirmed WMI for Lifan-badged passenger cars in vPIC or public SAE/ISO-sourced lists, consistent with the brand never having exported complete passenger cars to the US. A VIN starting with L at position 1 is consistent with a China-built vehicle generally, but we can’t hand you a verified Lifan-specific passenger-car prefix to check it against.

How to read a Lifan VIN: position by position

Every VIN built to the modern standard, Lifan included, follows the same ISO 3779 17-character structure used worldwide. The 17 characters split into three blocks:

Here’s what we can and can’t say about each block specifically on a Lifan.

Positions 1-3: World Manufacturer Identifier

Covered in the WMI section above: confirmed codes exist for Lifan motorcycles and for the American Lifan low-speed-vehicle business, but not for Lifan-badged passenger cars.

Positions 4-8: Vehicle Descriptor Section (VDS)

These five characters normally encode the model line, body style, engine, and restraint system, across a lineup that spanned the 320 city car, the 520 and 620/Solano sedans, the X60 and X80 SUVs, and the 650EV, roughly 2005 to the early 2020s. We don’t have a manufacturer-confirmed table mapping specific VDS characters to these models; that kind of decode data comes from manufacturer submissions, thinner for a brand with no US import history and a disrupted corporate structure.

Position 9: Check digit

The check digit is the single most important character in any VIN, Lifan’s included. It’s calculated from the other 16 characters using a fixed weighting table and modulo-11 math, and this part of the standard doesn’t vary by manufacturer. If even one character is mistyped or altered, the check digit won’t match, and a compliant decoder will flag it as invalid.

Position 10: Model year

The 10th character maps to a model year on a 30-year cycle under ISO 3779, identical worldwide. Given Lifan passenger-car production ran from roughly 2005 through the early-to-mid 2020s, most genuine Lifan car VINs should decode somewhere across these two ranges:

The letters I, O, and Q are never used in any VIN, Lifan included, because they look too similar to the digits 1 and 0.

Position 11: Assembly plant

The single character at position 11 normally identifies the specific factory. Lifan’s passenger-car production was concentrated at plants in Chongqing, later used by the Geely-Lifan joint venture to build Ruilan-badged vehicles. We don’t have a sourced table mapping position 11 characters to specific Lifan facilities, so we’re not presenting one.

Positions 12-17: Serial number

The final six characters are the production sequence number stamped on that individual vehicle as it came off the line. This part of the standard is universal and doesn’t depend on manufacturer-specific documentation.

Where to find the VIN on a Lifan

Where a genuine 17-character VIN exists on a Lifan-badged vehicle, it’s typically in the same places most manufacturers put it:

• Stamped on the chassis frame or firewall, usually near the engine bay
• Windshield or driver’s-side door jamb sticker, on vehicles from the mid-2000s onward
• Vehicle registration documents (in China, filed with local traffic authorities; in export markets, on local registration paperwork)

Because Lifan’s car lineup ran for less than two decades before the brand’s disruption, most Lifan passenger vehicles should carry a standard 17-character VIN rather than an older, non-standard chassis number. For background on older or shorter formats used by other manufacturers, see our classic car VIN decoder guide.

Recalls and safety information on a brand in transition

This is a genuinely harder question for a Lifan than for a currently-thriving brand, and we’d rather say that plainly than paper over it. Lifan never had a US distributor for passenger cars, so there’s no NHTSA recall history to check. For vehicles registered in China, the relevant framework is China’s Regulation on the Administration of Recall of Defective Auto Products, in force since January 2013 and overseen by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Whether SAMR holds active recall records under the Lifan name specifically, versus under Qianli Technology or the Ruilan joint venture that now controls the former Lifan factories, is not something we found a clear answer to, and given how many times the corporate entity has been renamed since 2020, we’re not going to guess at a single point of contact.

If you own a Lifan-badged vehicle and want to check for known safety issues:

1. Decode the VIN with the tool above to identify the model and model year as precisely as the available data allows
2. If registered in China, check SAMR’s recall channels directly using the VIN, since a dedicated Lifan-brand database may no longer exist separately from its corporate successor
3. For Lifan-branded engines or low-speed vehicles sold in the US, contact the American Lifan distributor directly; that’s a distinct product line under US consumer-product rules, not NHTSA vehicle recalls

Frequently asked questions

Is Lifan still making passenger cars in 2026?

Not really under its own name, and not as an independent company. Its car-making assets now sit inside Ruilan Auto, a 50:50 joint venture with Geely Auto that builds battery-swap EVs under the Ruilan and Maple Leaf names, and the parent has been renamed twice since and now operates as Qianli Technology, focused on autonomous-driving technology. Some export markets still advertise combustion vehicles under the Lifan name as of 2026, but we could not confirm whether that reflects current factory production.

Is Lifan the same company that makes Lifan motorcycles and engines?

Legally yes, both trace to the same 1992 Chongqing company, but the two businesses had very different fates. The motorcycle and small-engine side, including generators and go-kart engines sold in the US, kept operating through the restructuring and remains active under the Lifan name, plus a newer brand, PFMoto. The passenger-car side is the part that went bankrupt and moved to different brand names.

Was Lifan ever sold in the United States?

Full Lifan passenger cars were never officially imported or sold new in the US, and there’s no NHTSA registration for a Lifan car. Lifan-branded small engines, generators, and go-kart engines are sold in the US through a distributor called American Lifan, and vPIC lists a WMI, 7LN, registered to that business for low-speed vehicles, a separate product line from the Chinese car brand.

What is Lifan’s WMI code?

For motorcycles, vPIC confirms LF3. For passenger cars, we could not confirm one: vPIC has no passenger-car entry for Lifan, and no Lifan-car-specific code turned up in the SAE or ISO sources we checked. Treat any passenger-car WMI attributed to Lifan elsewhere online with some skepticism unless it cites a primary source.

Is the Lifan VIN decoder free?

Yes, free of charge with no sign-up required. Because Lifan has no US passenger-car history and a complicated recent corporate history, some model-specific fields may return less detail than for an active, US-sold brand.

Can a Lifan VIN be faked?

The 17 characters can be retyped, but the check digit at position 9 makes silent tampering difficult to pull off cleanly: any single-character change breaks the underlying math. That check still applies to a Lifan VIN. If you’re evaluating a Lifan-badged vehicle and something about the paperwork doesn’t add up, particularly given how much the company behind the brand has changed since 2020, our guide how to check if a car is stolen by VIN walks through the next steps.

Decode any Lifan VIN free

Type your 17-character Lifan VIN into the decoder at the top of this page. To learn more about VIN structure in general, see our guides:

• How to read a VIN number
• What every character in a VIN means
• Classic car VIN decoder (pre-1981)
• VIN decoder vs. vehicle history report
• How to check if a car is stolen by VIN