Patent ID: 8458012

Claim:
A method, comprising: at a vehicle data system running on one or more server machines: obtaining historical data associated with a plurality of vehicle configurations, wherein the historical data includes historical transactions involving the plurality of vehicle configurations; determining historical profit margins for a specific vehicle configuration using transaction prices associated with historical transactions for the specific vehicle configuration and cost information associated with the specific vehicle configuration, the specific vehicle configuration being communicated from a client device connected to the vehicle data system, wherein the specific vehicle configuration comprises values for a set of configuration attributes of a vehicle; determining an average profit margin for historical transactions of the specific vehicle configuration using the historical profit margins; adjusting the average profit margin to account for a plurality of variables at a particular time period in a market, wherein the plurality of variables includes market condition variables; determining historical sustainable levels for each of the plurality of variables; determining sustainable price information for the specific vehicle configuration utilizing the historical sustainable levels for the plurality of variables, wherein the sustainable price information for the specific vehicle configuration comprises a sustainable price for the specific vehicle configuration or a sustainable price range for the specific vehicle configuration, wherein the sustainable price or the sustainable price range represents a price for the vehicle in the market at the particular time period which a dealer can maintain over time while earning at least a user-specified return-on-investment and wherein the sustainable price or sustainable price range is determined by one of: using the adjusted average profit margin with the dealer's cost, or applying user-defined criteria to a Gaussian distribution of the historical adjusted average profit margins to determine a sustainable profit margin or a range of sustainable profit margins and using those profit margins with the dealer's cost; generating an interface to present the sustainable price information for the specific vehicle configuration on the client device; and guiding a user with respect to timing a purchase of the vehicle or with respect to pricing the vehicle for sustainability based on the sustainable price information.