The invention discloses a vehicle identification method and system. The vehicle identification method comprises steps of obtaining the appearance information of a to-be-inspected vehicle, obtaining vehicle external characteristics based on the appearance information, obtaining the transmission image of the vehicle, obtaining internal characteristics of the vehicle based on the transmission image, forming the vehicle description at least based on the external characteristics and the internal characteristics, and using the description to determine the vehicle model from the model database. The scheme uses integration of various mode information, and particularly introduces the transmission image and combines the internal structure information and the appearance information to realize vehicle model identification having greater practical meaning.