A TPM question, different, rather strange.

Preamble:

2009 model with 74,000 km's (46,000 miles +/-)
I have had the car since brand new, only me as a driver. Everything is bone stock, the only things I've ever changed have been the tires once, oil/filters, air/cabin filters. Not even a light bulb has ever burned out yet.

So, a few years ago, one or more of the TPM sensor batteries had gone kaput, making for a constant on (!) which I have just ignored, I always check pressures anyway, so not worth the cost to replace all the sensors until I eventually get new tires in the near future.

Question:

After 2+ years of the low tire pressure (!) being on after the initial start up flashing, it has suddenly gone off today. It flashed for about a minute, then went off, in mid drive. Now, when I start the car, It no longer does the start up flash and then go solid, it just remains unlit and blank in that spot.

No other problems, no electrical faults, no error or warning lights, no electrical or mechanical changes or new things etc., etc. The car runs as absolutely perfect as it did just out of the showroom, except the TPM is now not there. I have the same tires on for 5-ish years, and all the pressures are perfect.

Can anyone hazard a wild guess as to what strange gremlin could cause this?

Thanks!

 

Ha! That hadn't actually occurred to me as a possibility; but given the fact that the light did the start up flashing while driving and then went out, leads me to believe there is more to the issue than that.

Meh, at least the accursed thing isn't there anymore.

 

No, it no longer does the flash routine at start up. The actual TPM not being functional anymore is something I am not at all concerned about as far as a useful feature, it's more so I am curious about why it would change after all this time, and if it could possibly be a known thing in the Prius community as a: "Oh, that's a classic first sign of the capacitors leaking in the Mitsubishi ECU" or something else as obscure and horrifically imagined by me, lol

If it truly is simply the bulb being burned out, then I'm quite ok with that. I might eventually investigate how difficult it is to change said bulb, and spring for new TPM's when the present tires wear down to the point of needing to be changed, nevertheless.

 

Hahahahaha!