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Filling air in my Tesla Model 3 tyres using a smart tyre inflator pump

It asks for your vehicle registration number & based on that, the car and recommended tyre pressures are known to the system.

BHPian carthick1000 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Smart pump experience

Few days ago, me and my wife went to a nearby village for some work. We have never been to this place before. So we thought we will park the car in the parking terrain at the edge of the village and walk by. While on the way to the village, I was telling my wife that we need to check the tire pressure as it was lower than 2.9 bar (Recommended 3.1 bar for winter tyres).
Call it a coincidence, because, in the parking where we parked, there is a newly installed smart pump.

This pump has a display and a contactless card payment system integrated. It runs on solar power and has inbuilt batteries to store energy generated by Solar panels. So even on non-sunny days, the compressor in the smart pump can work with battery power alone. Also, the installers don't have to depend on the availability of electricity supply. So it can even be installed in remote parking lots.

The idea behind this company is private industries with parking lots and/or municipalities can lease these smart pumps and this company will install and maintain the smart pumps. In the case of the one we used, the local municipality installed this. As a user, it is free to use and if you want you can also donate using the integrated contactless payment system.

The working is as follows

  • You park at the designated spot
  • Click on the push button to wake up the touchscreen
  • It asks if it is a car or another type of vehicle

  • It asks for your registration number. Based on this the car and recommended tire pressures are known to the system.
  • Then it asks for a few more questions like: Have you driven for 15 minutes or more than 5km? (to assess the warm or cold tire), Is this a winter tyre? (Winter tyres usually need slightly higher pressure) and Do you want to save fuel and save money? (Answering yes adds an extra 0.2 bar to the setting). Based on the yes/no answers the tire pressure is determined.

On the next page, it shows the tire and pressure levels. You have to take the nozzle and pump up the respective tyre shown in the display. There will be a visual and audible notification when the pressure is reached. It also shows an option to pump up a flat tire. This setting probably allows the compressor to run for longer.

After you are done with all 4 tyres, the next page shows how much cost (eur), fuel (liters), tire wear (in kms) and CO2 emissions (kg) you saved for the upcoming 5000kms. This is probably an educated guesstimate based on the user input and the data they collected.

As the curious cookie I am, stepped into a nearby office facing this pump and checked with the receptionist how frequently this pump is used and she said it is used quite a lot. Her clients seem to love it and also in general, at least 20+ cars use it per day.

I am also freelancing for our village sustainability work group and discussed it with my fellow members and they were all enthusiastic about it too. We will be taking this initiative soon in our village too.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.

 
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