silly question, but can my tires be changed and rotated anywhere?

Yes, any competent shop can put tires on your Prius.

 

I don't think it really matters that much, for instance, I've rotated my wheels at the local dealer, in my own garage, and at the tyre dealer's when I recently had the summer tyres fitted. …but (seriously!) - I think the main consideration is whether or not the tyres are "handed" (IOW they need to rotate in one direction only - as both my summer and winter tyres are (check on the side-wall of the tyre, there will be arrows indicating direction of rotation), which means that the rights need to stay on the right, and the lefts on the left). If you decide to rotate the tyres across the car, they will need to be re-mounted on the rims so that the direction or rotation isn't compromised. Personally, I think it a Bad Thing to keep remounting tyres, as to do so tends to compromise the sealing-bead, and is one of the reasons I have two sets of wheels/tyres, a summer set, and a winter set! hope this helps - Wil

 

Yeah, everything's normal, until you do something like pulling the brake calipers off of the rotors. But tire rotations are normal.

One caveat: the TPMS sensors (typical to any recent car) are proprietary, when installing new tires it's likely best to just leave them be, and be careful with them.Toyota says to rotate front to back only, no cross rotation. Not sure why, and a few 3rd party places (Costco for example) might not follow that.

Speaking of Costco, last set of (directional) X-ICE I bought from them, they managed to mount them so I had 3 rights and 1 left, lol. This was loose rims, and I caught it right away (well, about 5 miles down the road), when I pulled into a gas station to air them up more.

 

regen braking takes place in the transmission.

on rotation, i have read that crossing is better, not sure why toyota doesn't recommend. maybe LRR tyres? some said if your tyres get noisy, cross them.

 

One thing, not cross-rotating: only two of our rims are getting chewed up by curbs.

Classic Silver touch-up paint is a perfect match, at least for our 17" OEM rims.

I've also heard, and experienced, that you can develop a slight pull, due to "conicity", and crossing the fronts helps.

 

Depends if you have a tpms system on your tires. Some shops are not set up for tpms tires/system.