The ecochip device, scam or saviour?

All Vauxhall Grandland related discussions
Post Reply
gamerouche
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2020 8:41 pm

Post by gamerouche »

Hi all, with all the recent outrageous price hikes at the petrol pumps, I'm wondering if anybody has had any experience of using the Ecochip device that plugs into the OBD2 socket & reckons to do wonders to your vehicle's fuel consumption with a promised reduction of around 15%. The official website offers the Ecochip for £39.99.
Amazon offer this gizmo for £11 but according to certain other articles I've read, the general concensus of opinion is that it's nothing but a scam! The items appear to be made in China but have NO connection to the Vehicle's fuel system whatsoever.
Any comments or observations?

Kind Regards Gam

19 Reg 1.2 Red Grandland X 10,600miles on the clock.

Cyberbob
Posts: 98
Joined: Fri May 28, 2021 1:38 pm

Post by Cyberbob »

gamerouche wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 1:03 am Hi all, with all the recent outrageous price hikes at the petrol pumps, I'm wondering if anybody has had any experience of using the Ecochip device that plugs into the OBD2 socket & reckons to do wonders to your vehicle's fuel consumption with a promised reduction of around 15%. The official website offers the Ecochip for £39.99.
Amazon offer this gizmo for £11 but according to certain other articles I've read, the general concensus of opinion is that it's nothing but a scam! The items appear to be made in China but have NO connection to the Vehicle's fuel system whatsoever.
Any comments or observations?

Kind Regards Gam

19 Reg 1.2 Red Grandland X 10,600miles on the clock.
Sounds like one of those dodgy resisters devices that trick the ECU, the only way to improve MPG is with ECU chip tuning or decent tuning box. However, this invalidates the warranty but can improve mpg as well as power and torque. Use to do it in the past but overall never found that much gain and seemed to end up with worse not better mpg overall.

I would take it as a scam with 'cheap Chinese crud' that will have no noticeable effect - it is like anti-virus software that is actually a virus in itself!!
2021B Grandland X Elite NAV
ianwat23
Posts: 99
Joined: Thu Oct 29, 2020 3:09 am

Post by ianwat23 »

I’d rather pay the that bit more for a vehicle specific remap, that way you know it’s been done for your car and takes into account the ecus fail safe parameters.
User avatar
brucey
Posts: 38
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2021 7:21 pm

Post by brucey »

Scam. If it is a Chinese resistor it will need to be connected inside the engine bay, Usually you need to attach it in some configuration across your airflow resistor.. google is your friend on this one.

the OBD socket won't allow you to do anything serious, at least just as a plug in device. Of course with certain cars you can program the ECU through the OBD socket, but that is more than just a plug in device.
-
Grandland Ultimate Nav 2020 Hybrid 4 :x
Midinotes
Posts: 164
Joined: Fri Aug 16, 2019 7:25 pm

Post by Midinotes »

Big Clive on Youtube has done a few teardowns of these. The more "sophisticated" scam ones even have a micro controller to flash some LEDs and give the appearance it's actually doing something to the CAN data from the vehicle! You won't do much useful stuff via the OBD socket on a modern Vauxhall without the proper factory issued engineers test unit (and even then I doubt if you could 'tune' the vehicle to improve it's fuel economy. It's amazing just changing driving style how you can achieve some pretty impressive fuel consumption figures from a 1.2 petrol Grandland.
Post Reply