My brother in Law has just moved back to UK from France and brought his LHD 2020 Skoda Octavia with him. Part of the process to get it certified in the UK is to have a permanent MPH display . Having spoken to his local Skoda dealer they can only recommend that he orders a UK RHD speedometer and see if it works. This will cost about £1200 to fit with no guarantee of success.

Has anybody any knowledge of doing this or can anybody suggest who he can talk to? I really don't believe that with a 2020 car you cannot just reprogramme the speedometer to display in MPH.

There will be other issues such as lights too.

I drive a RHD UK sourced Yeti in France, the speedo is only in MPH but I can select a km/h readout on the maxidot display, within those menus there are options for selecting units including mph/km/h I believe.

 

Have a look through the options and try to get the speed readout on the maxidot display, then try changing the units, it may require some VCDS coding, worse case scenario is a new instrument binnacle and dealer coding because the immobiliser settings are held within.

 

Practical solutions to the problem are to make a sticker for the speedometer with MPH markings or even to fit a supplementary bicycle speedometer or one for a kitcar.

Does he have a digital cockpit? If so, it should be possible to select mph as a readout for the dash. This will change both the dial and the large speed display. This would work but I'm not sure if it would be "permanent" enough for DVLA. You can do this in the settings, go down to units.

 

However, some RHD Octavia (including mine) have a problem where it isn't possible to change the units on the dash from mph to kph and (as a seperate issue) the sat nav can be stuck in km. Skoda are aware of both problems and are "working on a fix" but there's no due date.

For me, the units on the dash are a deal breaker as I have spent a lot of time driving in France over the past couple of years and need to be able to swap units. 

 

I'm curious if your brother in law has the same issues on a LHD as me (and some others on the forum) have reported on our RHD cars.

Just throwing this out there but would the car not realise in what country mode to be in (via GPS) and adjust accordingly - front/rear light etc?

Edited 9 February, 20215 yr by john999boy
Clarification

In mine there's options to change the units to mph etc. Under headlights there's also the option of left/ right hand drive. 

 

I've seen a few members on here saying their UK car doesn't have these options though! 

 

Mines a vRS with digital dash. 

 

To be honest I'm not sure I'd want to use a left hand drive car permanently in the UK. Got to cost more to insure etc.

My LHD Octavia has a dial speedo which is only in kilometres I have already changed the large digital readout to MPH but this is not acceptable to the vehicle certification authority because it is not permanent. the headlights and rear fog have already been changed.

By the way the headlights are not LED so cannot be changed without complete replacement.

Brianmo is my Brother in Law so will let him continue with this topic.

Surely driving a LHD car in the UK long term has disadvantages. No easy way of selling the car in France and buying a new one in the UK? 

 

Otherwise new dash might be the answer, unless it can be changed with VCDS or similar. 

I have recently heard of a variation of this, to permanently import a car into Ireland (and loads of people used to buy in UK) you now require a Speedo which displays in Km/h.    If you have a mph only version won’t do, but seems a dual scale one is ok

 

I must have missed the speech where Mr Farage explained these nuances that his leaving the EU would entail, or perhaps he was just selective in what he said

 

Brexit ate my homework.

5 hours ago, SurreyJohn said:

I have recently heard of a variation of this, to permanently import a car into Ireland (and loads of people used to buy in UK) you now require a Speedo which displays in Km/h.    If you have a mph only version won’t do, but seems a dual scale one is ok

 

I must have missed the speech where Mr Farage explained these nuances that his leaving the EU would entail, or perhaps he was just selective in what he said

 

Where did you hear that? It must be a new regulation because up to the first of January this year Ireland was flooded with UK imports all sporting MPH speedos, seems to be a bit late now to worry about an MPH speedo. The cash cow for dealers that was UK auction imports is dead, I've no sympathy for them they were robbing people over here with UK cast off's. 

On 09/02/2021 at 15:08, JRH30 said:

My brother in Law has just moved back to UK from France and brought his LHD 2020 Skoda Octavia with him. Part of the process to get it certified in the UK is to have a permanent MPH display . Having spoken to his local Skoda dealer they can only recommend that he orders a UK RHD speedometer and see if it works. This will cost about £1200 to fit with no guarantee of success.

Has anybody any knowledge of doing this or can anybody suggest who he can talk to? I really don't believe that with a 2020 car you cannot just reprogramme the speedometer to display in MPH.

That was a silly thing to do, an MPH speedo was always a requirement for importing a vehicle into the UK he should have done his homework first.