Tire Pressure Monitoring System Problem

Many have had this problem, as I have had. Some cars are delivered with increased tire pressure for the delivery (heard it stabilizes for transport), so I suggest having the pressure checked and get it near normal and ignore the warning. The Tesla rep said they are aware of the problem and plan on addressing the issue in a future firmware update.

Yup, I've had this sporadically from day one - with 4.1 for a week and 4.2 from then on. Tends to happen usually during a quick transition from highway speeds to slower surface streets or vice versa; essentially right after freeway on/off ramps. Drive a bit more and it goes away; just a software glitch that's harmless otherwise.

That apart, check your tire pressures for sure; I got a different message after I started driving from the factory - about overinflated tires. Mine were at 53 psi instead of 45.

The tires leave the factory with high pressure for transport. Just adjust your pressures first thing in the morning to the values that you want. For the 19" tires the vehicle placard pressure is 45 psi.

I had an issue with the light going on and off periodically. They found a faulting sensor and moved the antenna on the car.

mdh said:

I had an issue with the light going on and off periodically. They found a faulting sensor and moved the antenna on the car.

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Hmm... maybe, I should take it in; a hassle despite having two service centers close to me.

Or, just wait till I hit 12.5K miles; am almost a third of the way there already.

I was talking to my ranger about how my tire pressure warning came on, and the tire had 41lbs. He said te tires are filled to 55lbs at factory, and tpms is set from there. The calibration may be off and just reset. I am running at close to 48lbs now. He also said that he can see the actual lbs of pressure in the service screens... he pulled it up and it looked good to him. This makes me think that adding actual lbs in some sort of display is a software opportunity.

vlsidude said:

I should clarify that the warning I have coming on is not just the tire icon at the upper left, it is a triangle with an exclamation point at the bottom of the center screen with the phrase "Service Tire Pressure System". I checked the pressure in all four tires and its 47psi all around. I've driven about 100 miles and the warning does not go away. I'm probably going to have to make some time and take it in. Its disappointing to have a bug like this materialize in the first few miles of driving.

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I had that but it went off after a couple of minutes of driving. My assumption is that the telemetry was somehow interfered with and it couldn't contact one or more sensors in the tire.

jerry33 said:

The tires leave the factory with high pressure for transport. Just adjust your pressures first thing in the morning to the values that you want. For the 19" tires the vehicle placard pressure is 45 psi.

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Mine was delivered with exactly the right pressure. I checked them the next day after I picked it up (so I could check them "cold") and they were spot on.

mknox said:

Mine was delivered with exactly the right pressure. I checked them the next day after I picked it up (so I could check them "cold") and they were spot on.

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So was mine. I believe the ones with the high pressures are either when doing a factory pick-up or getting the car from the transporter.

I wonder why TM does not want to display the actual tire pressure on the screen like some other manufacturers (e.g. Porsche) do. That will be much more useful than just the idiot warning.

Especially when the idiot warning is way too sensitive and goes off when the temperature changes, so everybody just learns to ignore it.

I like the Roadster system much better. That does display the actual tire pressure. I was surprised when I got the Model S and couldn't find it.

CarlK said:

I wonder why TM does not want to display the actual tire pressure on the screen like some other manufacturers (e.g. Porsche) do. That will be much more useful than just the idiot warning.

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This has been covered in a couple of threads - there are two beliefs here:

* Because the TPMS system does not have a "learning" mode and requires a special device to sync the sensors, when you rotate them it would just get them out of whack anyway.

* The TPMS system is not intelligent enough to feed the pressures to the central computer and/or Tesla did not have time to develop the code to do it. The service bulletin that instructed Tesla service to lower the threshold from 39 PSI to 36.5 PSI has them program the TPMS module directly using the TPMS tool. One would think that if the TPMS unit had the ability to read out the pressures, it could do the alert from the control system instead of from the TPMS unit.

The first seems to be the likely one. Porsche and Roadster as Chads mentioned don't have the issue since they have different front/rear tire size. No tire rotation will be performed on them.

Someone reported on Tesla Forum the actual pressure was displayed on the service screen when the technician was trying to fix a TPMS false alarm problem. The onboard computer does seem to have the info.

CarlK said:

Someone reported on Tesla Forum the actual pressure was displayed on the service screen when the technician was trying to fix a TPMS false alarm problem. The onboard computer does seem to have the info.

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This wasn't the case a few firmwares ago.

vlsidude said:

I picked up my Model S at the factory this afternoon. I hadn't gone more than a few miles when I get a warning on the dash "Check Tire Pressure System, Call Tesla Service".

Has anyone else had this issue? I love the car, but I'm a bit worried about Tesla's QA. If this got through their process, I wonder what other problems got through as well.

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I picked up my car last week from the factory and I have the same problem. Everytime I drive the car for 15 mins it comes on. That's not my only problem. I also had a service required light -> Reduced power everytime after I used a supercharger. I would have to manually shut down the car and do a full reset to continue my drive home to LA. They sent me the 4.3 update and so far so good but I still get the TPMS light once in a while.

I called Tesla and they scheduled me in for a service check.

Twice this morning immediately after I headed out, I got "Tire Pressure Too High" warnings. It is getting milder and the pressure in the tires may have indeed gone up, but it was still rather cool this morning. By afternoon, it was quite a bit warmer and I did not get the message once, even after driving on the highway for an hour. It started to pour rain, so I haven't gone out with my tire pressure gauge yet. I sure wish the car could display actual tire pressures on the dash the way my last car did.

I've had the TPMS Needs Service warning fairly regularly since I picked up our Model S on December 30th. I've actually dropped it off at Fremont for them to investigate twice while having other minor tweaks done. They weren't able to find anything either time. I'd usually see the warning after sustaining speeds above 65mph for any length of time. I've been on 4.3 (1.25.45) for about a week now and haven't seen the warning once, though it's definitely too early to claim anything definitive.

On the other hand they did reduce wind noise, fixed the creak in our panoramic roof, applied the 85 badge, and did a fabulous job of detailing the car the last time I dropped it off. I'm willing to put up with some quirks on the software front given how committed they are to making everything else right.

FlasherZ said:

This has been covered in a couple of threads - there are two beliefs here:

* Because the TPMS system does not have a "learning" mode and requires a special device to sync the sensors, when you rotate them it would just get them out of whack anyway.

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Yes for MS but not for TPMS in general. I just found out my comment about Porsche or Roadster's TPMS can display actual pressure because tires on them won't see rotation is wrong. Costco intalled new front tires on my Cayman S reversed from the original postion last week. I got a warnning on TPSM display to reset the TPMS function. It worked fine after I did that. I wonder why Tesla could not implement a similar system. Is it because of the cost or what? The pressure display is a huge convenience over this dummy warning flag.