zlacker

I have doubts that we're getting an accurate story here, I know it's trendy to hate big companies but this seems like a really stupid thing to do and something you're likely to get caught doing if you're doing it on every truck.

Anyone buying used delivery trucks knows they get driven all day every day until it's uneconomical for the owner to continue operating them. Hundreds of thousands of miles. It would be very unusual to see one for sale with under 200k miles, that's "just getting broken in" for trucks like this.

I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical odometers. I havent's seen one in a passenger car in many years, they are all digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be harder to tamper with.

>>SoftTa+(OP)
Depending on the manufacturer the digital odometers are even easier to tamper with. There are a dozen people on my local craigslist that will reset/rollback odometers for you for $100.

>>SoftTa+(OP)
The article is dealing with a real lawsuit and it has many different members of the class action in multiple different states. They will have to prove their case in the court so it is unlikely that it is completely made up. There does seem to be a pattern of behavior here.

>>SoftTa+(OP)
>I have doubts that we're getting an accurate story here,

Well that's the magic of the court system, the filing of the lawsuit is to either get them to settle/admit wrongdoing or to force this to discovery.

>I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical odometers.

Freightliner vans aren't fancy hi-tech vehicles, they are utility vehicles.

But there's no difference between mechanical and digital odometers here. If you swap a digital cluster, you end up swapping the odometer reading. Architecturally vehicles have seldom moved on from storing the reading in the cluster.

It really becomes a question of where do you store the reading? A engine computer is more likely to be replaced due to an accident than the odometer in the car even though on many vehicles it will still track the mileage.

>they are all digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be harder to tamper with.

Actually, in most cars they are absolutely tamperable over CAN or physical access. If I remember right, the Honda digital cluster even up to my 2021 just has a standard SPI flash chip that you can tamper with to change the odometer value.