Source Hierarchy
Every number on the site has a source. When sources conflict, the higher tier wins:
- Manufacturer product page. The brand's own current spec sheet — Tune for the M1, Bluetti for batteries, EcoFlow for power stations, etc. Not a retailer's listing, which is often wrong or outdated.
- Owner-measured numbers. Weights pulled off a scale by an actual M1 owner, posted with a photo. These often beat the manufacturer number because the manufacturer's "from" weight rarely matches what shows up at your door.
- Cross-referenced community reports. A pattern across multiple Facebook posts or forum threads, not a single quote. One person's number is an anecdote; ten people saying the same thing within a few months is signal.
- Independent reviews from people who actually weighed or tested the product themselves, not affiliate-driven roundups.
- Truck payload from the door-jamb yellow sticker — the legally certified number for that VIN. Manufacturer "up to" payload averages get used only as a last resort and labeled as such.
The 345-Post Community Dataset
The gear database is built on top of a structured dataset of 345 posts from the M1 Owners Facebook group, scraped through February 2026 and tagged for the specific factual claims they contain — gear weights, install notes, reported issues, real-world payload numbers, and resolved questions.
Posts that report a measured weight or a verifiable spec carry more weight than posts that report a feeling. Posts that get echoed by multiple unrelated owners carry more weight than a single anecdote. The dataset isn't published in raw form (it would expose individual owner accounts), but the patterns extracted from it drive what shows up in the gear pages and the FAQ.
How Numbers Get Verified
Before launch, every page got read end-to-end against the source data three separate times. Each pass surfaced different things — a wrong weight on one page, a price that contradicted a comparison page, a M1L empty weight that turned out to be 27 lbs off the real number on Tune's product page. The fixes are documented on the changelog.
When sources disagree, the page does one of three things:
- Show the range. If owners report 280–310 lbs and the manufacturer says 295, the site says "~280–310 lbs" and notes the manufacturer figure inside that range.
- Pick the higher-trust source and explain. If manufacturer marketing contradicts a verifiable owner measurement, the owner number wins, with a line about why.
- Mark it estimated. If neither side is verifiable, the page says so. Estimated numbers get the word "estimated," "approximate," or a "~" prefix — never plain digits as if they were certified.
What This Site Can't Promise
Spec sheets change. Tune updates the M1, gear brands rev SKUs, prices move. The site is updated regularly but isn't a real-time feed. If a number on this site is older than what the manufacturer is publishing right now, the manufacturer's current page wins — always check the source before a $50K decision.
Truck payload is the one number that truly is per-VIN. The site's truck pages give a realistic range based on common configurations, but the number that legally matters for your truck is the one printed on the door-jamb yellow sticker. Use that, not an average.
The site does not test products in a lab, weigh items on a calibrated scale in-house, or independently verify factory claims. It synthesizes what's already public from owners, manufacturers, and reviewers. That's a real limitation worth knowing about.
Report a Correction
If a number looks wrong, send it. The fastest way to improve the site is owners flagging what's broken: contact@m1builder.com. Corrections that arrive with a verifiable source get applied quickly and listed on the changelog with the date. Corrections without a source get investigated against the hierarchy above before any change.