TÜV Certification
A wide range of our alloy and steel wheels are TÜV certified. But what does this mean?What is TÜV Certification?
TÜV is a European auditing and certification body that ensures wheels manufactured for sale in certain European Countries (primarily Germany, Switzerland and Austria) meet International Regulations (ECE), EC (European Community) directives, and German Motor Traffic Agency (KBA) road traffic legislation.
What does TÜV entail?
To achieve TÜV Certification, three key criteria must be met:
1) Manufacturer Certification: This is Certification of the wheel manufacturer’s quality management system. Being a TÜV Certified Member confirms you are a genuine and vetted manufacturer. If you’re not a real manufacturer; or your supplier isn’t a TÜV certified manufacturer, your wheels cannot be TÜV approved. Many manufacturers and resellers fall at this hurdle. Wheelwright have been stringent and compliant members of this group of TÜV certified manufacturers for some time. Our manufacturing facilities in our German Neuenrade production site pass an audit every 3 years by TÜV authorities from Europe. We ensure the manufacture of our AEZ, Dezent and Dotz wheels meet the standards set by the authorities, in a similar fashion to an ISO 9001 audit in the UK. This process is designed to ensure consistent quality of manufacture. TÜV wants to ensure that wheels sent to TÜV for testing are not falsified in any way; and that all wheels manufactured at the approved facility meet the same standards. Wheelwright, and the Alcar Group as a whole have been fulfilling these criteria since their inception; and continue to do so stringently today.
2) Wheel Test Certificates: This certifies the wheels as conforming to geometric standards and having passed impact requirements and structural fatigue requirements for specific vehicles, along with often-overlooked load rating requirements. Since our facilities have been certified, we are able to send our wheels to the European test centre to pass the TÜV geometric tolerance analysis and fatigue and impact testing. This is not a generic style-based test, but vehicle-based with each style being tested with the proper widths and offsets and load rating for the appropriate target vehicle. To TÜV Approve every design for each target vehicle is a very time consuming and costly endeavor, particularly for a producer like ourselves, which produces a wide range of fitments and designs for any particular vehicle. We are proud to offer this certification on the vast majority of our designs to give you peace of mind and 100% confidence in our products.
3) Vehicle Owner Certification: These are certificates ensuring wheels installed on your car / van / 4×4 / suv are TÜV certified for that specific vehicle. This is a certificate that the vehicle owner will receive from the TÜV authorities showing our wheels are TÜV certified so they can legally be validated when the customer comes to registering their vehicle and pass annual inspections across Europe (in a similar vein to an MOT). We does not supply this document, but it can be downloaded below.
Is TÜV only for Alloy Wheels?
TÜV does not only cover wheels, it is a certification (in a similar vein to a kite mark), which covers everything from toys to electrical appliances.