Editorial Policy
The two-source rule
No technical figure — oil capacity, torque value, service interval, part number — is published unless confirmed by two independent sources, with one declared exception: an official primary document stands on its own, as the next section explains. The deliberate departure from the two-source rule is described in the Unverified row below. A figure inside an item we label as an unverified owner report is not a figure we publish as ours: we print it as its source’s, or as what the page has said before. The same holds for a figure a page printed before we could verify it: we keep it with a label, as the Kept and labelled row describes. Primary sources are manufacturer documents (owner’s manuals, official spec sheets, homologation filings) and government databases (recall registers, fuel-consumption databases, crash-test reports).
How to read our verification labels
The two-source rule above has one declared exception: an official primary document stands on its own. Everything below that bar needs two independent sources, apart from the unverified owner reports and the kept claims and figures described in the table, each labelled where a page prints it. That gives every figure in our records one of these statuses, and the source line under each table spells out where every figure came from:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| OEM-verified | Read directly from an official primary document — an owner’s manual, a manufacturer’s published price list, a government register. A single source is enough here, because it is the source. |
| Cross-verified | Confirmed by two independent sources — the two-source rule at work. |
| Reported | Recurring owner and workshop reports, and multi-outlet press consensus, that clear our multi-source thresholds. Published as patterns and characteristics — never as facts — with their origin named. |
| Unverified owner report | A problem that owners report, through an owner forum, an owner review site or a site that compiles owner reports, and that we have not verified: it rests on one source, or on sources we have not been able to check, so it falls short of the multi-source thresholds of Reported. We print such a report only where the page labels the item itself as an unverified owner report, names the source and dates the item: with the date we read the source, or, where we hold no copy of the source, the date our research notes recorded the report, and then we say that we hold no copy. It is that source’s report. It does not tell you how common the problem is, and we do not present its cause or its fix as established: where the page gives one, it says whether it is what our notes record or only what the page has said before. A figure inside such a report, such as a speed or a distance, is printed as the source’s, not as a figure we have verified. |
| Kept and labelled | A claim or figure that a page printed before we could verify it, including a report from press reviews. We keep it, and the page says beside it that we have not verified it, that it is our reading, or that nothing we hold supports it. Where it is wrong, we correct it on the page and say so. |
| Unverified | A figure we could not verify does not appear as a number, unless a page printed it earlier and labels it as the Kept and labelled row above describes. We have made a deliberate departure from that for the BYD Atto 3 launch figures on our South African BYD warranty page, which rest on a single press report. Where the official data simply does not exist, the page says so in plain text. |
Anything below these bars stays out of print, apart from the departure described in the Unverified row above and the labelled items described in the Unverified owner report and Kept and labelled rows. We say so rather than guess.
Market-specific by design
Specifications genuinely differ between markets: the same model name can hide different generations, engines, transmissions, service intervals and warranties in Australia, the UK, South Africa and the Gulf. Every figure on this site is tagged with the market it applies to. We never assume one market’s data applies to another.
Human review is mandatory
Every repair-related page carries the name of the qualified technician who reviewed it and the date of review. Pages are re-verified on a 90-day cycle; each page shows its last-verified date.
Use of AI tools
We use AI systems to help extract, structure and draft content from source documents. No AI-drafted technical content is published without human technical review and sign-off. Accuracy is a human responsibility and we put a name on it.
Safety boundary
We do not publish procedures for high-voltage battery systems, braking systems, airbags/SRS, ECU programming or ADAS modification. These require certified professionals, and pages touching these systems say so explicitly.
Independence
Content is not sponsored by any carmaker. Affiliate links, where present, are disclosed and never influence technical conclusions.