"Price checked" — how Evident backs its numbers
Most car-comparison sites pull the list price from a manufacturer PDF and display it without comment. Evident turns that into a checkable claim: every number in a cost breakdown carries a provenance record — a date, a source, one of five evidence labels. Two signals make this visible on every car page: the price stamp at the top, and the labels inside the cost breakdown further down.
The stamp: checked or unconfirmed
At the top of every car page you’ll see either “Price checked on …” with a date, or “Price unconfirmed”. The first means the list price was checked against a real German source — the manufacturer’s configurator or price list; the exact source sits alongside the technical specs further down the page. No stamp means the price was only ever imported, never checked back against reality — price and trim may differ from what’s shown. Only checked prices count as fact: only they feed into rankings and superlatives, from the best-of lists under /beste to the cheapest pick on the homepage.
The five evidence classes
Inside the cost breakdown, every single line — depreciation, energy, tax, insurance, maintenance, the THG premium — carries exactly one label describing how that number came to be:
- Official ✓ — a rule or an official value. Vehicle tax follows the KraftStG formula directly (exempt under § 3d for pure EVs) — not a model, but statute.
- Anchored ◆ — tied to a published market figure. The depreciation line hangs, where available, off real residual-value figures from the trade press rather than a rule of thumb.
- Calibrated ◈ — a model tuned to measured data. Energy consumption runs on a real-world factor instead of the WLTP paper figure, checked against measurements like ADAC Ecotest; insurance uses the real GDV type class where the model is mapped.
- Model ≈ — a documented estimate with no external anchor. The maintenance line is a transparent flat rate by drivetrain.
- Market ↺ — a current market rate. The THG premium is that kind of line: not a fixed value, but a price that moves with the certificate market and gets adjusted to match.
No label ranks “better” than another — they only tell you where a number came from, so you can judge for yourself how firm it really is.
Unconfirmed doesn’t mean hidden
A car without a price stamp doesn’t disappear from Evident. It’s honestly labelled “Price unconfirmed” but stays fully searchable and comparable. What it doesn’t get is a place in rankings or superlatives — those need the maths to stand on a checked price. Better a car visibly flagged with a question mark than an unchecked price that looks like a fact.
Practical tip: open the cost breakdown on any car page — every line carries its label right next to the name. Hover over it (or tap, on mobile), and the exact source for that one number shows up: the specific type class, the residual-value reference, the tax statute. That’s this whole guide, condensed, right inside the numbers.
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