I was trying to get an idea of what my trade in will be worth and for fun went hunting the RX-8. Kelly Blue Book (link below) does have the RX-8 listed with most all details filled in.

www.kbb.com

 

Base model invoice is $25,179

 

On KBB tire pressure monitoring system is standard. Wonder if this is right?

 

yes, there is a warning light on the dash.

 

Since ABS is standard, I suspect that the system uses the ABS sensors to watch for differences in wheel rotation speeds, rather than directly measuring the tire pressures through some sort of sender in each wheel. If one wheel starts to rotate at a different rate than the others under steady-state driving, it could be indicative of a loss of pressure. We recently rented a Buick that had a similar system.

 

Actually I think the Tire Pressure monitor is for the run-flat tires if I remember correctly. Maybe not.

 

I believe (and it may be in another thread) that tire pressure monitoring is required by 2005 in the US. Most of those systems were first developed for run flat tires but I don't believe the RX-8 will have those. They are very expensive and the infrastructure to support them does not exist yet. The down side to all this is that the RX-8 does not come with a spare.

I think its a worth while system to have onboard. The sensors way only a few ounces. They get their power to read pressure and transmit from being rotated through the earths magnetic field. It certainly won't hurt to know a tire is getting low.