Picture this. You’re cruising around in your car – it’s a 2010 Nissan Leaf. It’s a great car and you’re happy with its 5 door hatchback, its front-wheel drive, and high-tech interior panels. You’ve finally found a car that you like, one that does everything you need it to. And what’s more – it’s electric!
But then something happens! You look over to your digital panel and you see a warning message that says ‘Maintenance: Tire.’
Warnings on your dashboard are never a good thing, but you find yourself confused as to what it means. It’s also possible that it says ‘Tire Maintenance Needed’ which is a little more descriptive but still confusing.
With modern electric cars, there are many such warning messages as these, and they vary in terms of their severity and urgency. If you’re sitting in your car and staring at a Maintenance Tire message and feeling confused – don’t worry!
You’re not the first. We’ve created this article to explain what it is and what you can do to fix it!
What Does It Mean?
To give you a quick answer, this warning message is telling you that your car needs to undergo tire maintenance. It doesn’t mean that you have to do it this minute, there’s not likely to be any critical error with your tires, it’s just letting you know that a due date is coming up or has already gone.
It’s probably an automatically programmed message, but you could actually program it yourself if you wanted, using the Vehicle Information Display Option that you might find on your car’s panel.
What Should I Do?
Well, if you’re staring at this maintenance tire message right at this moment – nothing right now. We know it can look alarming, but all it means is that you need to consider taking your car for tire maintenance soon.
The main things reasons your tires might need maintenance is either to change the tires if they are worn out or to rotate them. Rotation of tires is something that should be done frequently and is to be ignored at your own detriment.
When you see this message, consider scheduling your car to have maintenance done. It doesn’t have to be soon, though we recommend trying to find an appointment when you can, because you’ll want to ensure your tires are rotated.
Why Is It Important To Have Regular Tire Maintenance?
Typically, tires have to be rotated every 5000-7500 miles you travel. You might find that your Nissan Leaf is notifying you with the ‘Maintenance Tire’ message every 7500 miles. If you’re not travelling that often, it’s best to get them rotated every half a year if you can.
This does change depending on the kind of vehicle you have, the kind of tires you have, and the kind of terrain you’ve been driving on.
Rotating your tires is vital to make sure you balance out the difference in wearing that happens between the front and back tires.
This difference in wear will happen because the front and back tires have different purposes – for example, the back tires are made for stability whilst the front tires do the majority of your steering for you.
If you don’t rotate your tires then you might find that they end up with less tread than they might otherwise have had. This can cause a lack of balance in your car, which can lead to difficulties in control and steering.
Trust us when we say it’s better to have a safe vehicle and peace of mind when it comes to your control over it!
Can I Turn Off The Maintenance Tire Warning?
This is actually a little trickier than you might suspect. Push the left button to the left of your wheel and begin to cycle through until you get to the ‘settings menu.’ Once you’re hovering over this option, hit the bottom and it will take you inside the menu.
Now will want to navigate to the ‘tire’ option.
Once you’re into this option you will see what has caused your original warning message. There will be a few options here.
The top one will take you back to the previous section – ‘back’ – and below there will be an option to ‘reset.’ This is what you’ll need to press if you want the maintenance message to reset.
Below you will see how many miles you have set the message to appear at. It’s likely to be 7500 though it could be different. Press reset if you would like to revert back to the beginning of these 7500 miles.
If you go back to the general maintenance menu you can set additional maintenance reminders if you like – these are called ‘Other 1’ and ‘Other 2’ and if you navigate to them you’ll be able to set a custom reminder and decide how many miles you would like these at.
This can be useful for a variety of different maintenance issues and it’s a feature well worth using, especially if you tend to forget when your car needs certain checks.
Final Thoughts
We hope this article has shed some light as to what the Maintenance Tire’ warning message means, as well as what you can do about it.
Because of the vague, short nature of this message, it’s actually a common question to do with the Nissan Leaf and one that many people haven’t worked out until they either looked it up or learned to reset it themselves.
We would like to leave you with a reminder that regular car maintenance is important for the longevity of your vehicle. Rotating tires, for example, is not something you should neglect.
Whilst the ‘Maintenance Tire’ warning reminder on your Nissan Leaf is not urgent and can simply be reset as instructed above – we do recommend taking the warning seriously and considering taking your car for maintenance sometime soon!
