Your Tesla Will Now Tell You If Your Tires Are Worn

And if the tires are wearing unevenly.

By: Angel Sergeev

Dec 14, 2021 at 7:09am ET

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A new over-the-air update by Tesla brings a nifty little upgrade to the software, which can now display the status of the car’s tires. Of course, the tech wasn’t publicly announced by the automaker but observant customers noticed it quickly and shared the knowledge with the rest of the world.

As Drive Tesla Canada reports, the new feature shows if your tires are worn and the tread depth is too low. More interestingly, however, the system also detects if the tires are wearing unevenly. A screenshot obtained by the publication shows a warning message informing the driver that the rear tire tread is too low. The software advises the driver to “schedule for tire inspection and rotation.”

But how does it work? We don’t know for sure but Drive Tesla Canada reports there's a smart and easy way to determine when a tire’s tread depth is low. When a tire loses tread, it basically becomes smaller and as a result, it starts rotating faster compared to when it was new. Tesla is likely measuring how many times the wheel is rotating and compares the value to a preset value.

As you could imagine, if a tire is rotating faster than the preset value, this means it has gotten smaller and has lost tread. On the same principle, if one tire rotates faster than the others, this likely means it is wearing unevenly. Our source says this feature comes available as part of the 2021.44.5 software update.

For now, we don’t know if this new feature will be available for all Tesla models. Usually, the EV automaker doesn’t follow a strict launch schedule of its updates, which means this new update could arrive at a random time during the next few weeks. More significant upgrades could be planned for the Model 3 and Model Y next year, and you can find more info about that here.

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Source: Drive Tesla Canada