James Ruppert An app that reads your car’s mind
Is that used car all it purports to be? An app can help you check
The app can indicate how a car has been driven by its owner
It would be utterly wonderful if our cars could tell us what they have been up to all these years. The stories the Baby Shark (my BMW 320) could tell me about 1979 may even match my own.
Plugging into used cars isn’t new. I thought I was electroluddite, but I’ve had a service interval indicator reset tool for nearly 30 years. So it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to try out one of those new app things that helps car buyers to uncover fraud in used cars they are looking to purchase. The app is now officially available in the UK.
Luckily, I have a 20-year-old in the house who is on hand to tut, shake her head and do the download stuff when I fail miserably. What we have is Carly’s Connected Car app, available for BMW, Mini, Mercedesbenz and Volkswagen Group cars, which is handy because that’s mostly what we own.
At the most basic level, the app taps into the car’s multiple computers (ECUS) to check for correlation with the visible speedometer and identify whether data has been manipulated. This app has been available in Europe for three years and data collected from 300,000 cars suggested that 23% of Minis had experienced some form of manipulation, with the figure rising to 27% for the E60-generation BMW 5 Series.
On average, 15% of all BMWS checked exhibited some form of tampering, with 90% of those being related to the mileage. The worstcase scenario turned out to be a 5 Series from 2000 with a marginal 18,703 miles showing – in reality it had racked up 120,564 miles.
As well as the mileage checks, the app can indicate how a car has been driven by its previous owner. It displays fuel consumption as well as average speed and journey times that the car has been used for.
It also lists fault codes logged in the car, highlighting potential problems with the engine, brakes, infotainment, climate control and steering systems.
I know how much garages pay for this software, but being able to do this yourself without having to slip the mechanic a tenner, as I did last time, is very welcome. Lots of dealers won’t break open the magic plugs without £100 plus VAT, so having the ability to reset diesel particulate filters (DPF) and NOX filters is a bonus and you can unlock groovy functions and even power outputs.
Prices start at £44.90 for the adapter (available from the Carly website or Amazon), with the app (either IOS via the App Store or Android via Google Play) available in both Lite (which offers a simple check function) and Pro versions.
You will be pleased to know that the Ruppert fleet’s VW and BMW have not been mucked about with.