TPMS

let the pressure out of one of your tyres and the indicator light will come on.

 

TPMS is standard on the US specification Prius. But, I don't know about other regions.

 

Your car has it, and I'm pretty sure it's functioning correctly.
As stated above...letting a bunch of air out on a tire (tyre if you drive on the wrong side of the road) will act as a quick go/no-go test.

All cars have a TPMS system now thanks to GM and the Clinton administration.

Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your government at work.


EDIT: Oops. I'm sorry. That's not YOUR government at work. That's MY government at work. Like most Americans, I'm a little thick about reading the locations.

Do the operational test.
You may not have the TPMS, in which case you'll just have to keep the tires (tyres) monitored with a Mark-1, Mod-0 eyeball and a gauge.

Good Luck!

 

If it doesn't come on when you start the car, the bulb may be burned out.

 

If you have the original wheels, another way to know you have the system is to see if your valve stems are of the metal type (not black rubber).

 

actually it is the people in the 90's who owned a ford explorer & never checked their tire pressure. because of those stupid people, several of whom died from stupidity tpms came about.

 

Actually, it was Ford dealer that told their Explorer customers to lower the air pressure in there Michelin tire to achieve a better ride.

It was Ford way of masking the problem of too high of CG and the roll-over problem that was happening with their Explorer vehicle.

 

Actually?
It was Firestone...not Michelin, and the story is a little more complicated than just FOMOCO trying to achieve a better ride with a vehicle with a higher than normal GsubC....but yeah sometimes Darwin was spot on about the whole evolution thing.

The only troubling things are that drivers are sometimes able to procreate before being edited out of the gene pool, and sometimes they take innocent lives along with them.

 

Did you read this in a U.S. publication? If so, ignore it. All U.S.-market cars are supposed to have TPMS since model year 2008. Most U.S. writers are not thinking about differing regulations, or much of anything else, beyond our borders.

Actually, it was multiple errors by Ford and Firestone and the customers. Any single error wouldn't have been a huge deal, but a half dozen errors chipping away at the same safety margin ended up killing a lot of people.

 

^Concur.
I was unclear.
Corrected.

Thanks.

 

question...my last two chevy hhr's had the tpms. and I could scroll the the display to view the actual tire pressures.

I don't see this option on my my 2010 prius iv...I was wondering if any of the obdII readers can display this info in real time?

 

No, this system doesn't track which sensor belongs to which location.

The OBD 2 port is used to enter the serial numbers of the sensors but I don't know that any pressure info could be downloaded thru it.

 

bummer....

 

My other car is a Chevrolet Volt and I like the GM TPMS much better in all respects.