Car clocking, the illegal practice of reducing the mileage shown on the odometer of a vehicle, is a dangerous exercise as it leads to second-hand car buyers believing that the vehicle is in better condition than it is. This can give the new owner a false confidence in the car’s safety and believe that the car’s maintenance can be put off for a while longer, which in turn can cause potentially fatal accidents on the road. To combat this issue, Tacho-Spion have patented an ultrasound engine checker to give an accurate reading of a vehicle’s mileage.
New EU legislation
Michael Schmutzenhofer, CEO of Tacho-Spion, developed this product in alignment with the new EU legislation aimed to be in force by 2017, which calls for a digital record of a car’s history on a national database and an outlawing of mileage correction companies. Schmutzenhofer believes that his innovation, which can give an accurate reading within 5-10% in a matter of minutes, will ensure that the database will provide up-to-date and accurate information and stated: ‘Nations have no choice other than to implement the ultrasound engine check if they seriously want to keep the database accurate.’
How Does It Work?
The gadget works by taking an ultrasound to determine the state of the engine – a vehicle with high mileage will have an engine with much more wear and tear than a newer vehicle. This way, the condition of the engine can be compared to the mileage shown on the odometer and the information can be assessed to see whether the numbers match up with the damage to the engine.
One noted problem with the device, if the engine hasn’t been serviced for a while or has received excessive wear and tear through other means, the reading will be far higher than the actual mileage, leading some second-hand car sellers short pocketed out of their potential earnings. The improvements of road safety produced by this gadget, however, far outweigh this discrepancy and it can be argued that it provides more justification for car owners to take care of their vehicles and regularly service their cars if they intend to sell the vehicle on.
The future
Whilst Schmutzenhofer hopes that the ultrasound scanning of an engine will be introduced into the UK MoT after successfully implementing the technology across Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Austria, the United States and Malaysia over the last 10 years of it’s development, Tacho-Spion are waiting upon a UK partner to help introduce the device to the country.
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