I know these are rather cheat-y rhetorical constructs to make a point, but they are to illustrate why even (very intrusive) vehicle telemetry is problematic, if the intent is to measure road use:
- I had a period of almost three months where my car sporadically did not report vehicle speed to my instrument cluster, or record mileage to the odometer. Oddly, the ECU could read the speed just fine, so I could drive around using a CANBUS code reader with the ECU-reported speed as my speedometer. Even after spending over $1000 at the dealership replacing speed sensors and instrument clusters, it didn’t work. The techs at the dealership called engineers at the manufacturer, and they still couldn’t figure it out. Then, for no apparent reason, it just started working again and has been fine for five years.
- Due to a very badly performed construction zone on the highway I drive every day, a bump (more like a sidewalk curb in the middle of the interstate) caused a chunk of the engine of my car to fall off. As a result, I had to have the short block replaced. When everything was rebuilt, I had to get it tuned. It took a total of about 15 hours of tuning on a dynamometer to get it dialed in. That was a lot of “mileage” that my car registered that was all done in what was essentially a garage.
