Big Brother concerns aside, this seems like a great way to gather data on road conditions. Imagine something like Waze getting immediate, automatic data streams on wetness, ice/snow, potholes, etc...
I can also imagine a scenario during an autocross session where the tires cry out, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!? PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!"
I teach a class that covers wheels and tires so i follow some tire industry e-zines etc and I recently read an article about connected tires for commercial trucking. In that case they were selling it as a way to use data to lower overall tire costs for the fleet. It will probably start in that way, sold as a cost savings tool to major buyers, and then trickle down to normal cars where it's of dubious direct benefit to the consumer but ends up being a data mining and then cost saving feature for future vehicle owners, which mostly won't be individuals when some large proportion of cars on the road are corporate owned autonomous robo-taxis.
Does this mean I won't be able to make my 5G call until the tires are finished talking and hang up?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the car be the connected / intelligent thing? Can send speed/direction/road condition based on accelerometers back to big-brother, and receive real-time updates for navigation and accidents back.
I dont want my anything connected to anybody else's anything.
As i type this on my smartphone. Oh well.
Having a TPS in your tire is already bad enough.
Justjim75 said:I dont want my anything connected to anybody else's anything.
As i type this on my smartphone. Oh well.
We were at the track last weekend, and in one session in our ZL1, I cut a tire on some debris. I realized the tire was going down, and came in... TPMS never triggered (tire was 28psi when I got to the pits). I swapped on our other tire set, so my wife could go out for her session, and forgot to do the TPMS re-learn for the new set. When she pulled back into the pits, I did the re-learn. A few minutes later my phone dinged with an email from OnStar Diagnostics telling me the driver's rear tire (the one I cut) was at 22psi. It must have picked up the TPMS on the pile of tires when she pulled in, before I did the re-learn.
The ZL1 was talking to the mother ship the whole time, even though I didn't pay for continued OnStar after the free trial. We're all connected, whether we like it or not! 
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