EEVblog #1181 - Car ECO OBD2 Fuel Saver SCAM!

Dave exposes the ECO (Nitro) OBD2 Fuel Saver as a complete SCAM!
They are supposed to talk to the car's ECU via the CAN bus on the OBD2 connector, but does it even do that?
Or is this Homeopathy for cars?

Bonus rant on Audiophile Audiophoolery!

Bitcoin Donations: 38y7DE8HEHNj8fGDtUr4PkCn9nWxiorvvy
Litecoin: ML7oQokTwB38bgzzjLDbRV97HKAHuwRfHA
Ethereum: 0x11AceA38DCA9DbFfB4F35f3F746af65F9dED28ce

Support the EEVblog through Patreon!

Buy anything through that link and Dave gets a commission at no cost to you.

Stuff I recommend:

Donate With Bitcoin & Other Crypto Currencies!

[ianmelzer]

Big Clive did a tear down of several of these.

[jetmeerkat]

The most disappointing thing is that so many Social Media Platforms ALLOW these scammers to advertise with them!

[hawkhill]

Yes this saved me a fortune on fuel. Plugged it in and it fried my ecu. Now the car won't start and I don't need to buy fuel. Winner winner, chicken dinner

[racegts]

This was AWESOME! Exactly the kind of real electrical engineering source to debunk the scam! Thanks mate!!

[adewey]

These scans should be reported to consumer Affairs for fraud!

My elderly mother-in-law bought FOUR of them. When she gave me one, I immediately had a scan alert in my brain. I decided to Google it and found your video. Thank you.
My mother-in-law luckily saved her receipt.

[jonathans]

Just saw a YouTube add for this. Good to see YouTube is policing their advertisers.

[Jay_Dahl]

Thanks for your in-depth research, Dave! I ended up here because I wanted to research this fuel saver product which was advertised on Youtube, and the claims seemed too good to be true. I think Youtube is shooting themselves in the foot by selling screen time to scammers like this, because now we all have to question the integrity of ALL Youtube advertisements. I don't think Youtube can easily stop scammers from posting deceptive videos, but accepting advertising dollars from obvious scammers is an entirely different matter.

[edwardippoliti]

Thank you sir, you just saved me from buying one online for half price of 49.99, almost did, but what stopped me was that there were no cons, whatsoever in the reviews, only pros, so luckily I decided to check for cons, and you were the first video that popped up, thank you for saving me at least 30% of my next long road trip's fuel costs "!

[ClaytheBMXer]

Automotive Technician in the US here. Came here to see what was inside this specific model since I just had to tell a customer they got scammed when they brought me one of these to install on their vehicle. I let him know it's basically just some flashing LEDs and that equipment to reprogram an ECU actually costs thousands and you're not going to get any real fuel economy savings without other supporting modifications anyways. Big Clive did a great teardown on at least one of these as well. Thanks for the video! Gives me somewhere to send people when they ask about these ridiculous things.

[ndelliott]

I'm a mechanic and have come across quite a few scams. The most common one was the "tornado" which was a fin installed between the intake tube and the throttle body. It was supposed to create a vortex that somehow increased air density? But the worst one was a 2 piece magnet a customer wanted me to install on his fuel line. I've seen quite a few of these over the years and most claim to remove "containments", but this one claimed to stretch the gasoline molecules so that you needed fewer to generate combustion!

[amylynncastro]

Thank you so much for doing what you do. Cause I'm so sick of the scamers

[DJDarkGift]

Thanks so much mate for this great video. I just came upstairs to see my dad sitting at his Chromebook looking at an advert for one of these scammy products with his wallet sitting on the table right beside him. I had to interject telling him that those things were a scam and garbage and it took me showing him your video to get him to navigate away from the page. Kudos Mate.

[mushroomsamba]

It's probably better that it doesn't actually connect to your ECU, at least this way it can't do any damage.

[jimhart]

The real solution is to go get yourself a 1970 Challenger with the big block Hemi and burn all the gas.

[dgkstl]

But it "destroyed" the energy companies. Haven't you noticed the windows boarded up at all of the gas stations?

[kristine]

You can thank the marketing for this product for bringing me to your channel. Whenever I find something too good to be true and I wonder how it would even work.. my BS meter is like.. I better see what other people are saying because surely some people have fallen for it. Thank you for the detailed review. The ad that I saw talked about a kid prodigy being expelled from a ivy league university over this because the oil companies offered him big money for the patent and he refused. Sounded plausible, but still suspicious. I feel bad for the folks that don't look into the validity of something before purchasing. In their defense though, it shouldn't be possible for something to go on the market for sale and not do what its advertised to do. How do we get these scams off the internet?

[jimmihenry]

Yellow LED = Device it's scamming.
Red LED = Scam confirmation.

easy isin't it!

[demariojason]

Well I'm telling you guys right now, mine worked like a charm. Saved me about 10mpg, on a fill up; it was great 👍. I drive a Camry and I drove it around the country on about 2 1/2 tanks & then things faded out & I woke up to realize that I over slept & it was time to go to work.

[kevinwagner]

For $20 more they should sell an adapter that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket.

[zexelM]

That chip is only soldered to the board so it wouldn't fall off.