Disclosed is a vehicle identification method and system. The method includes: acquiring appearance information of an inspected vehicle; obtaining external features of the vehicle based on the appearance information; acquiring a transmission image of the vehicle and obtaining internal features of the vehicle from the transmission image; forming descriptions on the vehicle at least based on the external features and the internal features; and determining a vehicle model of the vehicle from a vehicle model databased by utilizing the descriptions. This method merges various types of modality information, especially introducing the transmission image, and combines the internal structure information with the appearance information, so that the present disclosure can identify a vehicle model more practically.