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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires?

[1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880

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Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more frequently than their license plate over the lifespan of their car?

I ask as your question seemed a bit strange to me.

I am not sure if you are alluding to the fact that individuals trying to evade the law wouldn't know to change their tires, or if car licensing & insurance is much different than I imagined in the US (and individuals get a new license plate each year or something crazy).

Edit: also thanks for the link! I really had no idea RFID was hidden in tires! Makes me wonder what else they are hidden in...

   > Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more
   > frequently than their license plate over the lifespan
   > of their car?

Yes, of course. And the RFID tag is really not helpful outside of inventory as far as I can tell. When they started this project I expected something like the microwave tags they glue inside a DVD case to detect shoplifting that you could remove from the tire innards before you mounted it. But nope, its embedded in the tire material.

You don't normally get new plates often, but you can if you want (report them lost or stolen and pay ~$20), and it is also rather easier to steal someone else's plates than their tires.

Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are generally unaware of.

I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.

I was also unaware of this. That said, RFID chips are used for inventory systems. The inclusion in a tire is most likely innocuous and doesn't seem that unusual to me.

It's used for monitoring pressure so the driver can be alerted if the tire starts to go flat.

And they are quite expensive to replace, often more then the cost of the tire themselves. Also most insurance carriers don't reimburse for them, hence it is a separate coverage item.

No. That is a different mechanism, and part of the wheel, not the tire.

TPMS also transmits a unique code that is traceable. See this:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/tracking_vehi...

I just assumed it was a misunderstanding of TPMS. Apparently some tires have RFID directly embedded as well for tracking purposes, but from what I can find it doesn't sound like it's all that common yet.

So then they're active RFID chips that broadcast?

Some are active, some are passive. There doesn't appear to be any single standardized design for them.

>The inclusion in a tire is most likely innocuous and doesn't seem that unusual to me.

Its intended purpose being innocuous wouldn't stop someone from abusing it.

Agreed. I should probably buy an RFID read / writer.

Owners of commercial vehicle fleet trying to manage the timely replacement of tires would welcome the ability to scan their vehicles and know the serial numbers of the tires. That would let them track age and make sure they're all replaced in a timely manner. Or switched to winter tires where it makes sense to do so (like Quebec, where it's the law to have winter tires after Nov 15.)

Yup, embedded right into the rubber. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is to provide serial numbers which allows you to 'age' the tire. Older tires are less reliable than fresh tires and there are laws in states like California that disallow selling "old" tires as new. You can read the tag and see when the tire was made. The sensors are not used to indicate inflation as far as I know that is a completely separate system. When they were first proposed, some folks showed they could be read from side of the road although that was unreliable. Reading them from the roadbed itself however was quite reliable as you ended up, worst case, with the tag being one wheel diameter away from the reader, and they were spec'd to be readable like that as folks doing inventory on a stack of tires did not want to rotate the tires in the stack. The last set of tires I 'read' (to show this off to a disbelieving friend) had a 18 digit serial number and a 6 digit date code. I'm sure there is some IEEE standard now for what your tire should report.

In the us all tires have a number stamped in the rubber that indicates the year and week of manufacture. This has been there for a very long time. I'm sure the idea was efficient inventory management more than anything (easier to read without unstacking tires.). Pressure (TPMS) is a very different active device. They're battery powered and the batteries need to be replaced after some time.

I dunno if I'm gonna change my tires but I imagine if I didn't want to be tracked it would be not too difficult to smash/electrocute/burn the tags into nonfunctionality.

Its extremely unfortunate that if you were to use an arc welder near your tires, the RFID tag may no longer work properly.

There's a good chance the tire will no longer work properly, too!

How do you do that if they're embedded in the rubber material?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g

TPMS sensors or RFID tags?

According to the linked article - RFID. They are physically embedded in the tires during the production process and intended for inventory management.

that is moronic. it is yet another point of failure on the tire!

a rfid label on the inside of the tire would work exactly the same and not compromise the tire structure.

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