Car clocking has been a growing problem around the globe for quite some time. In fact, if reports from the HPI Check are anything to go by, the rate of discrepancy in car mileage (especially for 2nd hand cars in the UK) has actually increased over the past two decades in the UK alone.
According to a report from the Times, about one billion Euros was made in the UK from the sale of clocked vehicles. For the uninitiated, the practice of “clocking” vehicles is sometimes referred to as busting miles in the US or odometer fraud.
Although the practice is declared illegal in the US, the loopholes in the EU legislature make it legal in the UK, explaining the rising cases of Car Clocking.
To solve this, and other problems, Groupe Renault is in the process of building a digital car maintenance book based on Blockchain technology. By partnering with Vechain (a world-leading Blockchain solution provider) Groupe Renault will be able to store data for each automobile on a secure and immutable Blockchain network to enable an open information gathering architecture that prevents problems such as Car clocking.
The digital car maintenance book
Through Vechain’s Blockchain platform, each vehicle will receive a unique digital identity that will be stored on the decentralized log book network. As a result, every car owner will receive a private key that gives access to data viewing and editing of each car detail with a QR code, an RFID tag and an NFC chip for traceability.
A great video about this solution can be seen in the following video:
If a car owner decides to sell the car, a complete record of purchase history including mileage and repair and replacement data will be transferable to the new owner through a Blockchain transactional platform.
In fact, Vechain is going even much further and coming up with more value system compared to traditional maintenance and logging practices that require a system that holds car logs with multiple physical parties.
Benefit to car owners
One of the biggest value propositions that Vechain’s Blockchain will provide to users is the fact that buyers of 2nd hand vehicles will no longer have to doubt the true condition of a 2nd hand vehicle since the Vechain Blockchain will provide an easily verifiable record system that delivers all data about a certain car at the touch of a button.
A user no longer has to confirm the data provided by the vehicle seller though visiting various physical holders of a specific vehicle. Thanks to Blockchain’s immutability, all the data will be available to the new owner on a purchase and that data is verifiable since it’s on the Blockchain network. This will enable easy tracking of stolen cars and thus the end of the car clocking problem globally.
The partnership between Groupe Renault and Vechain
The partnership between Groupe Renault and Vechain will enable a wide variety of applications for Groupe Renault apart from keeping maintenance book records for vehicles.
As Ellie Elbaz (director of digital and connected vehicles at Groupe Renault) mentioned in an announcement by Groupe Renault, “This digital car maintenance book will enable us to provide our customers with new services in an ecosystem alongside insurers and dealers. Blockchain technology is able to create a reliable trust protocol”
He also added that the Vechain Blockchain technology “will be a major step forward for connected vehicles and the micro-transactions and security requirements associated with them.”
By deploying Blockchain’s immutability, Vechain believes that it can set up a product management ecosystem for cars and eventually get rid of car clocking through a distributed log book for each car. This means that all of the 12,700 global selling points for Groupe Renault could potentially issue out decentralized log books and each automobile from Groupe Renault could become traceable from the owner to the manufacturer in the future.
Groupe Renault has been in existence since 1898 and boasts of a solid presence in over 120 countries around the world. In 2016 alone, the company sold over 3 million vehicles and boasts of over 120,000 employees with over 30 manufacturing sites.
The current state of partnership
The partnership between Groupe Renault and Vechain will enable transparent relationships between economic partners in the B2B as well as the B2C ecosystem.
Currently, there is a Groupe Renault team of Blockchain experts in its digital factory dedicated to incubating Blockchain projects that will see the development of scalable digital asset ready databases.
According to Sunny Lu, the CEO of Vechain, “Blockchain technology is able to create a reliable trust protocol,” and the partnership with Groupe Renault is only “one area where Blockchain can have an impact on the car industry.”
“Vechain expects many other areas in the car industry to benefit from the ability to store information in a tamper-proof protocol, such as crash reports, insurance claims, loan agreements, product recalls and much more” He added.
Vechain is gaining traction as the world’s leading Blockchain enabler for management of product data from the manufacturer to the owner.
With more partnerships such as the one with Groupe Renault, Vechain will revolutionize the way products are distributed in the new global economy by facilitating a transparent supply chain in a variety of industries.
