Owning an electric car doesn’t mean you’re suddenly smarter than everyone else.
A Tesla Model Y owner who will remain anonymous brought up a concern to his fellow Model Y owners on Facebook that his tire pressures were several PSI off shortly after putting on his new hubcaps.
Conflating the two events, he assumed his hubcaps were to blame.
Check out a screenshot of his post below.
“I had to put new hubcaps on my Model Y, but as soon as I removed OEM hubcaps, tire pressures dropped to 35/36 PSI,” his caption reads.
“Not sure if this is just coincidence or something messed up. After putting new hubcaps, it’s still the same. Not sure if anyone’s experienced this.”
Like all Teslas, wheel covers snapped over a traditional set of alloy wheels come standard.
The average car owner with a lick of common sense knows there’s no connection, save for a piece of wheel cover plastic puncturing a tire, between new wheel covers and a change in tire pressure.
The cause for his 6 PSI drop across all four tires most likely had to do with the weather, specifically fall heralding colder temps causing a drop in ambient temperature.
Colder temps mean gases, like regular air, condenses resulting in reduced air pressure.
Typically, a drop of 10 degrees correlates to a 1-2 drop in PSI.
Fellow Model Y owners were sure to remind him as such in the comments.
“Let me get this straight, you took off your hubcap, and you think there is a correlation between you taking off a hubcap and all of a sudden an unexpected drop in tire pressure?! Here is the problem ,” a fellow Model Y owner commented.
“Coincidence, it probably hadn’t updated yet. Warm yesterday with a cold fall morning? It will do that,” another Model Y owner commented.
Although I’m keeping the owner anonymous, I peeped his profile and saw he lives in Washington DC.
In Washington DC, since the beginning of October, average temps have dropped from around 70F to 52F which, when coupled with a 3-5 PSI increase while driving, can more than account for a 6 PSI swing
Driving in the middle of the day as opposed to early morning can also explain such a large PSI change, too.
Although the Tesla Model Y owner didn’t reply to comments, he did leave a couple of likes, so, he saw the messages and, well, he learned something new, I guess.
As Fall gets into full swing and those temps start to dip, this is your reminder to check your tires pressures, too.
I know some of you don’t have fancy TPMS sensors.
