Ten years ago, the ADAC launched an “initiative against speedometer fraud”. Little has improved since then. The mileage of every third used car is still falsified. According to the police, the total damage in Germany is around six billion euros annually. The EU regulation of 2017 on the protection against odometer manipulation should provide a remedy. A current ADAC investigation proves, however, that the scam also works with newer vehicles: As soon as models come onto the market, there are already corresponding devices for “speedometer adjustment” on relevant websites.
The ADAC assumes that more than two million used cars will continue to be sold each year with falsified mileage. In a matter of seconds, the on-board electronics can not only be read out via a central plug in the car, but also overwritten in all control units in the case of the odometer reading. Corresponding manipulation devices are available for as little as 50 euros. The ADAC puts the damage at an average of around 3,000 euros per used car. The EU regulation prescribes that the mileage in the car must be systematically protected. But to this day the ADAC lacks a detailed regulation of what exactly this protection should look like and which neutral body should check it.
In surveys, two thirds of those questioned say that they are aware of the problem with used cars. At the same time, trust in the protective effect of modern digital technology has grown a little more than it was five years ago, as a recent survey on behalf of CarCert GmbH shows. Three quarters of those surveyed also stated that a vehicle with a documented résumé would sell for a higher price. In Germany, this digital résumé was previously not permitted due to concerns about data protection. CarCert has now received approval for such a database: In addition to the historical mileage of the vehicle, the documentation also contains the results of all general inspections and many other data.
The ADAC warns, however, that the cat-and-mouse game with the fraudsters is not over: speedometers are not only manipulated shortly before the sale of used cars. It is customary to tweak the mileage during the entire usage phase so that the wrong data is entered in the vehicle history of the manufacturer’s workshop and officially approved, so to speak. In addition, many databases in Europe would begin their documentation with the first general inspection. At this point in time, however, the vehicle is already three years old and the speedometer has often already been manipulated, especially in the case of leased vehicles. The automobile club, like the EU, is therefore against mileage databases.
CarCert, on the other hand, refers to the example of Belgium: There, the number of new odometer manipulations had already fallen from around 60,000 cases annually to 1239 in 2014 after the introduction of the Car-Pass system. The ADAC, on the other hand, sees the car manufacturer as responsible. So-called HSM chips are supposed to make cars safer: Using specially secured areas on the chips (Hardware Secure Module) such as in smartphones, fraud can be made so expensive that it is no longer worthwhile.