PIP TPMS/no spare tire/fix it can

TPMS works with pneumatic tires - any pneumatic tires. There is no relation, correlation, or connection with internal combustion or any other motor or engine, so the type of prime mover should be removed from the discussion. It's a red herring.

Tom

 

Right, but I am looking at it from a cumulative point of view. I understand that ICE system has nothing associated nor is it connected to TPMS in anyway whatsoever, but I'm extending the debate beyond just TPMS per se. What I am trying to say is that on top of all the complications and things that could possibly go wrong with conventional ICE vehicles, the last thing we need is to worry about one more pneumatic elecronic that would cost us more money in an already difficult economy we're facing. Not trying to be an alarmist or create a red herring...

Now we're talking!

I'm sure the system will improve and evolve to something more sophisticated down the road but given this current generation's iteration, I'd like to choose to pass on TPMS...oh but wait, I can't.

The Firestone debacle could have been avoided if our regulators focused their safety effort at the source, where the tires were produced but the agency was so intentionally and badly underfunded that they couldn't perform their day to day function.

 

This is a factitious line of reasoning. Why not eliminate power steering or power brakes? How about the automatic transmission? They add complexity as well, and a lot more so than TPMS.

It's okay to not like ICEs. You are allowed to have that view, but connecting it with TPMS makes no sense whatsoever. Why not just state that ICEs are overly complex and leave it at that?

Tom

 

The less than perfect TPMS on the Gen II and Gen III Prii can be bypassed if one has issue with cost, safety or whatever. The procedures are in this forum. In time someone will post for the v, PIP and so on. Whether the law is right or wrong is rhetorical, it's the law.

Manufactures insistence on replacing spares with slime is something we need to take up with them, or the Dealer at time of purchase, if it's a deal breaker. I can't wait to hear the real costs associated with the use of "Dealer" slime. The Tow companies and Tire stores are loving this. Either way, these choices are being made for us, regardless of our opinions.

I have electricity, but still keep candles and matches in the house.

 

I am excitedly waiting to receive my new PiP with my wife's blessing. I have not told her, however, that they have taken away the spare tire in the PiP. I'm a little worried about how she might react to that news.

I don't think either of us have ever used the spare tire in either of our cars (or previous cars) but the loss of that security may make her worried about us getting the PiP for our family, and then possibly getting stranded someplace on a cold Minnesota winter day.

 

Oh wow! Thank for allowing me to have an opinion. Here's my preference of a green car:



I guess the concept of relative importance eludes some of us...wow let's forgo power brakes, does that even make any sense in your line of reasoning? TPMS nice to have, but leave it to the consumer to decide.

 

I was not aware of this, and for a car as expensive and sophisticated as the Prius, it's entirely unacceptable!!!

The tpms in my Tesla shows me a diagram with the actual pressure of each tire. It also sounds an alarm with a text message if a tire is low. (Maybe if one is high also. I didn't know they did that.)

Since the transmitter must be telling the receiver an actual pressure, this information should be available to the driver upon request. (In my car, the car must be stopped with the hand brake engaged before it will display the graphic, and then I can enter an information screen with a number of different sub-screens for various kinds of information about the car. The alarm will sound while the car is moving.)

 

Forty years ago, many would have said the same about power brakes, automatic transmissions, and power steering. Now it's almost impossible to buy a car without them.

Government mandates are another topic worthy of discussion, but certainly unrelated to the complexity of the internal combustion engine. People's opinions of government regulation varies widely. Libertarians think we need little or no regulation, others want the government to tell us when to breath. It becomes a philosophical argument best left to Fred's House of Politics.

In terms of consumer choice vs. government regulation, the standard for government mandate has been safety, fuel economy, and emissions. TPMS fits squarely into this niche. Like it or not, it's an easy point of debate to defend.

Tom

 

Last post on this topic I promise. How would you even begin to think that power brakes was around 40 yrs ago to stop a heavy moving object like a car, is beyond me. Also, consider looking into a very important document that our founding father drafted to create this country call the Bill of Rights. And if our government really cared about things as you've said like: safety, fuel economy and emissions, PiP would have been around for the past 10 years or possibly even earlier, instead of invading Iraq and GM crushing the EV and in the same year they introduced the Hummer H1.

Anyhow, when there's a new feature on my car like TPMS and I don't know what it actually does then I'll have a hard time seeing its value. However, the TPMS I want is the one on Daniel's Tesla Roaster. I see the value in their technology where you actually get a figure on your screen to know exactly which tire is low on pressure etc. Anyhow I'll tip my hats to those early adopters again for being first to own a PiP. Being the first comes with alot of risks especially with the issue of not having a spare and the durability of LiOn battery pack.

 

It annoys me as well that the Prius TPMS gives only a pass/fail output. Given all of the digital displays, it should have been easy to display the actual pressure of each tire. Not doing so smacks of a marketing decision. I don't like it.

Tom

 

If they're leaving out the spare, does that mean they're leaving out the jack as well?

 

I would assume so. A jack doesn't do much good without a spare, unless you are lifting your Prius out of a mud hole. I don't imagine the stock jack is much good for that. You can always carry a 48" tractor jack behind the back seat, like I do with my Jeep.

Tom

 

There was a jack in the prototype PiP (from the owners manual):

 

I lost the attachment when I edited. Here it is

 

Yes, but it saved me, as crude as it may be. The symbol lit up on the instrument panel as I turned on the power before heading onto the freeway home. I got out and eye balled all four tires and they looked OK to me. Maybe its the spare, I thought. Still puzzled, I rolled the car forward a couple of feet and inspected each tire more carefully. THIS time, I found the head of a large nail flush with the tread. Apparently not enough air had escaped to make the tire look flat.
I headed for a gas station and pumped the tire up hard, leaving the nail in. 250 miles later and the next day, I drove it into the local tire joint and had them patch it. Now all is well and I'm glad I have the system!:rockon:

 

It's this type of reasoning that made the the Volt a PHEV and not a BEV.

Depending on the fix a flat, it might be necessary to jack up the flat tire to get it re-inflated.

One of the tires on my wife's car has a slow leak, and I've learned that waiting for it to look low means letting it drop to 20psi or less. Eyeballing tire pressure isn't the way to go. I know she doesn't use it, but I put one of those cheap gauges in all our cars.

 

FYI- The first use of power brakes was around 1919, by Hispano-Suiza in Spain (now a French company), followed in 1921 by Duesenberg in the USA. By the 1950s, they were fairly common in large cars. I've been driving for a living since about 1960, and the first limo I can recall driving with power brakes was a 1955 Cadillac. The owner had a '52 as well, but I don't remember for sure if it power brakes. So forty years ago? Yeah, it may be beyond you up there in Canada, but down here in the lower 48 we would indeed think that power brakes were around to help "stop a heavy moving object like a car." The first car of my own to have power brakes was a 1962 Chevrolet Impala convertible, so by 50 years ago they were pretty common.

 

seriously?

 

Yeah, are you?

 

This is getting OT.