Nissan has introduced an innovative tire technology that experts are saying other manufacturers should emulate.
Nissan’s Easy-Fill Tire Alert system uses a series of flashing taillights and headlights, along with horn beeps, to notify users of correct and incorrect tire pressures.
"Ensuring your tires are inflated to the correct pressure is one very simple step consumers can take to help make their vehicles safer, especially with the start of holiday road trips," Selim Hammoud, Nissan's director of product safety and chief safety officer, told CarBuzz. "Nissan's Easy-Fill Tire Alert takes the guesswork out of filling tires and makes simple vehicle maintenance less intimidating for the average driver."
Underinflated tires lose traction, which increases fuel consumption, and tires that are underinflated by 20% wear out 25% faster, according to CarBuzz.
Nissan’s system allows vehicle maintenance to be easier, and this is something experts feel other manufacturers need to pick up on, too.
Annually, there are approximately 11,000 tire-related motor vehicle crashes, with 600 deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA says that keeping tires properly inflated "can save up to 11 cents per gallon and can extend a tire's life by 4,700 miles," according to CarBuzz.
The Easy-Fill Tire Alert system is currently standard on the Versa, Sentra, Altima, Maxima, Leaf, Kicks, Rogue, Rogue Sport, Murano, Pathfinder, Armada, Frontier and Titan.
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