If you're in the market for a new Nissan, you may just be able to throw away your tire gauge and erase terms like "cold pressure" from your mind. Nissan is launching what it calls the Easy Fill Tire Alert system, an intuitive feature that handles everything about tire pressure save for actually putting the air in.
The US Department of Transportation recommends checking your tire pressure (and that includes the spare tire in your trunk or hanging on the underside of your car) at least once every month. Now take a short, little trip down memory lane to late April ... have you checked your tire pressure since then? I'm betting there are a lot of "nos" out there, and I'm no exception. It's definitely been more than a month for me.
Newer cars have various types of sensor systems that let you know when you need to add air, but they can be finicky and unspecific. The system on my Nissan Murano, for instance, activates a warning light when tire pressure is low, but it doesn't show which tire it is and it automatically activates even if you're just a single psi off, practically begging you to ignore it.
The Nissan Easy Fill Tire Alert takes sensor-based pressure monitoring to a new level of convenience. It not only monitors your tire pressure and lets you know when you're low, but it actually displays the problematic tire and exact pressure, so there's no guessing or checking every single tire just because one happens to be 1 psi off.
The Easy Fill system also serves as a digital gauge when filling your tires. Instead of dealing with cold pressure measurements and those annoying pressure gauges affixed to the gas station pump, you can simply start pumping. The car's lights will flash to let you know that air is going into the tire, and the car will honk when you've reached pressure. If, for some reason, you happen to miss that cue and begin to overfill the tire, the car will start flashing more quickly and will honk three times. You then know to let out air, and the car will again honk when you're down to proper pressure.
When it comes down to it, the Easy Fill system takes away the little amount of brain work involved in keeping your tires at pressure. Plus, it gives you one less thing to worry about on your already busy schedule. Keeping your tires at pressure will give you safer, more efficient performance from your car.
The Easy Fill Tire System will debut on the 2013 Altima and will be standard equipment on all 2013 models. Watch it in action in the video below.
Source: Nissan
