My MINI has the rotational differential sensing. It's a silly simple system, all that is needed is to average the distance each wheel travels by tallying up the pulses from the ABS sensors, the one with the significantly higher count is the low tire. It's not infallible though, if all the tires are low by the same amount - like what happens in the winter or if all the tires have a slow leak, the system is blissfully unaware of it. My new truck actually has a sensor in each wheel that measures pressure directly and reports it on a display in the dash, if any of the pressures read out of limits, the warning will be sounded for a particular tire position along with the pressure (or lack thereof).
Direct-reading system are becoming law in the US, mainly as a fallout to all those Ford Explorer SUVs that were blowing apart their Firestone tires and rolling over. Rotation-delta systems were a stopgap until the real stuff gets migrated into the various models.
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Date: 2008-04-15 03:57 am (UTC)Direct-reading system are becoming law in the US, mainly as a fallout to all those Ford Explorer SUVs that were blowing apart their Firestone tires and rolling over. Rotation-delta systems were a stopgap until the real stuff gets migrated into the various models.