Four Tire Giants Helped Write the Guideline for the Radio Chip Cured Into Your Tires. It Says the Off Switch “Shall Be Disabled” Before the Tire Leaves the Factory

Passive RFID tags are cured into tires sold in the United States, including, by Michelin’s own account, its full North American commercial truck line and, by Kumho’s account as recorded in a 2019 NHTSA report, every Kumho passenger tire not made in China. The tag carries a unique, unchangeable serial number, was engineered so that nobody can switch it off, and is disclosed in no US warranty, owner’s manual, FAQ or retailer page The Auto Wire could find. The companies’ own documents explain what the tag is for. They do not explain why no one told the buyer.

On page 30 of a technical guideline issued on April 26, 2021, by the RAIN RFID Alliance, with a GS1 standards official as project leader, there is a sentence about an off switch. “As per ISO 20910, the kill function shall be disabled before the tire leaves the tire manufacturer facilities.” [1] The kill function is a standard command in this class of radio chip, the one thing that lets the owner of a tagged object silence it for good. The guideline, pointing to the international tire-coding standard, tells tire makers to set that command’s password to zero and lock it permanently, so that no one, the manufacturer included, can ever change it. [1]

The contributor list on page 2 is a seating chart for the tire industry: two names from Michelin, two from Bridgestone, one each from Goodyear and Continental, alongside staff from GS1 and the tag maker Avery Dennison. [1] They were specifying a passive radio transponder, 37 to 43 millimeters long by two suppliers’ published dimensions, laid into the rubber before a tire is cured and left there for its life. [2][3] It has no battery. It speaks only when a reader illuminates it, from a distance a federal report put at under two feet and one supplier advertises at up to 11 meters. [4][3] When it speaks, it gives up a globally unique serial number identifying maker, model and individual tire, and that number never changes. [1]

No tire buyer was handed that guideline. The Auto Wire read what the tire companies, their trade bodies, tag suppliers, data consortium and regulators have put on the record, from warranties and patents to an API specification on GitHub and a Report to Congress. The record supports part of the worry. It doesn’t explain the silence. Tags are documented in Michelin’s North American commercial truck tires and, by Kumho’s account, in nearly all of that brand’s passenger line. The companies describe them as traceability tools for factories, fleets, retreaders and recyclers. The engineering choices, a permanent identifier, no off switch, readable while rolling, are also the choices one would make to build a tracking tag, and the companies’ own patents describe reading the tags at toll barriers, in parking lanes and from a moving car. And a US buyer cannot learn, from any document the companies publish here, whether the tires in the driveway carry one.

What is actually cured into the rubber

Michelin describes its tag as “a passive electronic chipset that can exchange data with a reader using Radio Frequency (RF) signals,” with chip and antenna “‘protected’ by two rubber pieces cured into the tire.” [5] A 2023 Bridgestone Americas patent puts the module “embedded between the sidewall and bead filler,” near the rim. [6] The US Tire Manufacturers Association’s 2022 bulletin supplies the physics: “Each tag that passes within the radio frequency transmission range of a reader/interrogator will be energized,” and “Embedded tags may not be seen during visual inspection of the tire.” [7]

What the chip holds is set by the 2021 guideline and the ISO standards it implements, 20909 and 20910, published in 2019 by a committee whose secretariat is the American body ANSI. [1][8][9][10] The main memory bank carries a 96-bit number in GS1’s SGTIN-96 format: a company prefix identifying the manufacturer, an item reference identifying the tire type, and a 38-bit serial with room for more than 274 billion values. [1] “Every single tire must be identified by a unique Serialized GTIN (SGTIN),” the guideline says, and “once the EPC memory has been encoded and the content verified, it shall be permalocked.” [1]

There is a second number. Every such chip leaves the foundry with a factory identifier, the TID; NXP’s data sheet for its UCODE 9 describes a “96-bit unique tag identifier (TID) factory locked, including 48-bit unique serial number,” and Impinj’s data sheet for its M775 says the same. [11][12] A tagged tire therefore carries two independent, permanent, globally unique identifiers, each readable in the clear. [1]

What is not on the chip matters too. The guideline says the electronic identifier “is not the same as” the DOT Tire Identification Number molded into the sidewall; NHTSA’s 2019 Report to Congress agreed: “RFID tags currently used in tires do not contain the TIN.” [1][4] No name, no plate, and in the standard layout no date of manufacture, though a Michelin patent filing with a 2012 priority date proposed encoding the DOT date in the serial field. [1][13]

The absence of personal data is the industry’s central reassurance. It is accurate, and it is beside the point. A license plate carries no name either; what makes it useful to a camera network is that it is unique, fixed to one vehicle and readable at a distance. The tag has all three properties. Two reads of one serial at two places and times link those sightings with certainty, no database required, and the company prefix gives away the brand besides. The number is a tracking identifier by construction. Who can connect it to a person is a later question.

Then the off switch. Impinj’s sheet states the rule the guideline relies on: “A tag will not execute a kill operation if its kill password is all zeroes.” [12] Lock that zero, as the guideline requires, and the kill command is dead for the tire’s life. [1] Michelin tells British consumers: “It is therefore impossible to deactivate the RFID.” [14] Its RFID site adds that the tag “is embedded into tire and can’t be removed, it’s not an accessory.” [5] Chip makers sell privacy modes that make a tag invisible to readers; no tire document we found mentions using one, and Hana RFID’s data sheet offers EPC encoding “with or without data lock,” which makes locking a decision, not physics. [15][16]

Who is doing it in the United States, and how sure anyone can be

No company publishes a list of US-market lines that carry tags. The sidebar table compresses what the documents support, and each verdict is only as strong as the paper behind it.

Michelin has the one dated, US-specific rollout: a March 2017 release calling it “the first manufacturer to integrate RFID into its full commercial truck tire portfolio,” retreads included. [17] NHTSA’s 2019 study, relaying a trade-press account of Michelin’s 2017 statement, recorded a figure of about 88 percent of its new tires tagged, in a passage about truck tires. [4] For passenger tires the record thins. The December 2020 pledge to “connect all its car tyres by 2023” named production “in Europe, China, Thailand and Brazil,” not the United States, and Michelin’s 2025 and 2026 pages still call universal tagging “Our goal” and “the ambition.” [18][19][14] The only US consumer page we found naming RFID in a Michelin passenger tire is a Porsche partnership page; the US owner’s manual is silent. [20][21] Verdict: documented for North American truck tires; announced but not confirmed for US passenger tires.

Bridgestone has promised one thing for one US plant. Its $550 million expansion of the Warren County, Tennessee truck and bus tire plant, announced in August 2022, would allow “all tires made in Warren to be equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags,” with completion first set for May 2024 and then “the end of 2026.” [22][23] Its 2023 Integrated Report planned “for almost all truck and bus tires used in Europe, the United States, and Japan to be equipped with RFIDs by 2030”; the machine-readable text of the 2025 report, and of the 2026 report’s value-creation section, contains no occurrence of “RFID.” [24][25][26] Verdict: planned for one US truck plant, slipping; no US passenger tire described as tagged.

Goodyear has made no US production statement we could find. Its first RFID truck tire was a 2012 European product; “the RFID chips currently only carry identifying data.” [27] Its 10-Ks since 2015 mention RFID once, for an Asia Pacific commercial tire launched in 2018, and never since. [28][29] Verdict: no US statement.

Kumho has the broadest documented coverage and the least disclosure. NHTSA’s 2019 report, citing a 2018 email from a Kumho America executive and trade-press reports, says “Kumho Tire implemented the capability to install RFID tags in tires in their three Korean and one U.S. plant in 2016,” and that Kumho was “currently installing RFID tags in all of the passenger car, light truck, and truck and bus tires” “except those produced in China.” [4] The report does not name the plant; Kumho’s one US factory is in Macon, Georgia. Kumho’s US warranty and FAQ never mention a tag. [30][31] Verdict: recorded by a federal agency, on Kumho’s word, as of 2019, for essentially all non-Chinese production including a US plant.

Continental told US fleets in February 2023 that its Conti HDR 5 and HSR 5 truck tires “will be RFID-equipped in 2024”; the US truck-tire releases we checked since, through October 2026, omit the word. [32][33][34][35] Verdict: announced, unconfirmed. Pirelli’s “Cyber Tire,” sold in the US on P Zero lines marked with a sidewall “C,” is an active sensor, “always active and completely automatic,” not a passive tag; its only confirmed passive RFID is in a 2026 racing tire. [36][37] Verdict: sensors disclosed; passive tags undisclosed. Hankook, Yokohama, Toyo and Nexen have joined the industry’s data consortium and described patents or intentions without naming a US product. [38][39][40][41][42][43] Verdict: intent only. Sumitomo’s RFID Dunlop tires are a Japan-market product, Giti’s chipped EVO truck tires are European, Nokian is not a member, and Linglong, the first Chinese full member since July 2026, has made no US product statement. [44][45][46][54][47]

Sidebar: Who tags what, according to the documents

Why the companies say they do it

The explanations are consistent across a decade, and only Michelin’s mention drivers, as beneficiaries of connected services meant to “ease driver journey and tire replacement.” [19] Michelin’s RFID site lists logistics, production, inventory, retreading and recycling: “The RFID will determine the recyclability of the tire at the end of its life,” and “Thousands of tires are saved from the trash.” [48] Its UK page adds theft, counterfeiting and dealer maintenance; a Michelin executive said in 2020 that “RFID in tyres makes many new business models possible.” [14][18] Bridgestone’s tags “enable more efficient asset management and optimization of fleets’ investments in tires, including retreading.” [23] Sumitomo, in a Japanese-language release read in translation, cited “quality assurance, claims response, and counterfeit prevention”; Yokohama and Toyo cited inventory efficiency; Beontag’s Kumho release cited “complete traceability and sustainability.” [44][40][41][49]

Behind all of it is a European rule. The EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, in force since July 2024, calls for a digital product passport whose data carrier should “Where possible” be “on the product itself,” and lists tires among the first priorities; the regulation itself does not name RFID, but the RAIN Alliance reported in July 2026 that the Commission’s preparatory study proposed RAIN RFID as the primary carrier for tires, with a delegated act expected in 2027. [50][51] No company document cites any US law or regulator as a reason.

The stated purposes and the engineering do not line up neatly. An inventory tag does not need to be readable “even when the tire is moving or rolling,” as Michelin advertises. [5] A recycling tag must survive to the shredder, which is the evident reason for disabling the kill command, though the guideline states none; a tag the owner cannot switch off is, by the same token, a permanent identifier for the years in between, when the tire is on a car. The consortium puts it plainly: “Embedded RFID is today the only solution which accompanies the tyre from cradle to grave.” [52] The grave is the recycler. The interval is your commute.

The plumbing nobody voted on

A serial number is only as powerful as the database behind it, and the industry has built a switchboard to fourteen of them. The Global Data Service Organisation for Tyres and Automotive Components, GDSO, is a Brussels non-profit established in January 2022 at the initiative of Bridgestone, Continental, Goodyear, Michelin and Pirelli. [53] Its fourteen full members include most major brands on a US tire rack; the US Tire Manufacturers Association and the Tire and Rim Association, founded in the United States in 1903, are associates, and a Pirelli executive chairs the board with a Michelin executive as vice president. [54][55][56][57]

The mechanics are in GDSO’s technical pages and in the API specification its members implement, which sits on GitHub: a reader captures a tire’s SGTIN, GDSO’s resolver points to the manufacturer’s server, GDSO’s authentication service on Amazon’s Cognito issues a token, and the manufacturer returns the data. [58][59][60] GDSO says it stores neither tire data nor user information. [61]

Data comes in two tiers. Anyone, with no account, can resolve a tag to three public fields: brand, commercial description and size. [60] Everything beyond those three requires a GDSO-approved legal-entity account plus a commercial agreement with each tire maker, and the most sensitive fields are flagged “Private” in the specification itself. [59][62] Those flagged fields include the unique identifier, country of origin, weight and an object called “dotTin,” described as a “Tire Identification Number” for the “US Market,” with plant code, size code, optional code and production week. [59] The DOT number is not on the tag. It is one authenticated query away for any business GDSO and a manufacturer approve.

Who gets approved is not public. The FAQ says “priority is given to the Tyre value chain stakeholders” and refers questions about criteria, fees and which fields are public to an email address. [61] The Terms of Use, governed by Belgian law, define a “User” solely as “the legal entity having created an Account” and let GDSO “monitor the use of API to ensure their quality, improve the Services and verify the use made thereof.” [63] The Privacy Notice, from March 2023, covers people who register for the service; it does not mention tire owners, drivers or vehicles, and neither does any other GDSO document we read. [64] Michelin separately sells lookups of the public fields at one euro per call, marketing the identifier as “Unique, Unforgeable and Readable in all conditions until the end of life of the tyre.” [65]

In April 2026 GDSO announced a “Founding Workshop” for a “North America Tire Electronic Identification & Lifecycle Services Ecosystem,” held May 21, 2026, in Solon, Ohio, on the premises of tag maker Hana RFID, for “fleets, tire manufacturers, service networks, and technology providers.” [66] “We will not be there to agree on technology. We need to agree on services, value, and how we work together,” the invitation said. [66] Regulators, dealers, consumers and privacy do not appear on the page, and no outcome had been published five months later. The RAIN Alliance’s tire working group, co-led by Michelin and Hana staff, lists the workshop among its 2026 goals beside an unexplained “FCC Petition.” [67][68]

The hardware comes from a small club. Hana, in Solon, claims “over 250 Million tires tagged to date” and says its tags are “offered under full license agreement with Michelin”; Beontag, with a US dateline in Trotwood, Ohio, built its tag with Michelin and supplies Kumho; Murata’s tags were “developed in coordination with Michelin”; Avery Dennison’s Maxdura is the one rated at “up to 11 meters, depending on mounting place and tire type.” [69][16][70][49][71][3]

Can your tires be read from the roadside?

Start with the airwaves. FCC rules let a reader in the 902 to 928 MHz band transmit one watt through an antenna of up to 6 dBi gain, four watts of effective isotropic radiated power, and no legal unlicensed reader exceeds that. [72] The real limit is the tire: carbon-black rubber and steel belts absorb radio energy. A 2006 Michelin patent reported a tag readable at 42 inches in open air dropping to four inches inside tire rubber, a 2005 Georgia Tech study measured about half a meter, and NHTSA in 2019 found that “Nominal read ranges for RFID tags embedded in tires have been found to be less than 2 feet.” [73][74][4] Newer tags do better. Confidex’s data sheet says “In tire up to 3m / 10ft”; Bridgestone’s 2023 patent reports a truck-tire module read at 1.3 meters, 1.9 after mounting and dismounting; Avery Dennison claims up to 11 meters. [75][6][3] Michelin publishes no distance. [5] The primary record points to one to three meters at legal power, against about six for the same reader and an ordinary tag. [76]

Now the evidence on tires in motion, labeled as our research files label it.

Demonstrated, in the companies’ own patent filings: rolling tires at walking pace and in controlled lanes. Goodyear patents from 2009 to 2015 describe speed-bump drive-over stands whose antennas need the tag to complete “at least one revolution.” [77][78] Michelin patents, one granted in June 2017, describe up to four antennas 0.8 to 1.2 meters from the sidewall, for vehicles passing “at a maximum speed in the region of 50 to 60 km/h,” at the US limit of “a gain of 6 dBi and a maximum conducted power of 30 dBm”; race cars are the main application, passenger cars are listed, and no read-success rates are given. [79][80]

Proposed: reading at speed and at public infrastructure. Goodyear’s US Patent 11,641,053, granted May 2023, mounts the reader in the wheel well to read a passive tag “particularly when the vehicle 8 operates at high speeds, such as up to about 200 mph.” [81] Michelin’s US Patent 11,562,601, granted January 24, 2023, is the one for policy watchers. Its claims cover “reading an RFID identifier installed on the vehicle and/or on the tire” as it passes a “road infrastructure,” which the patent’s description defines to include toll lanes, motorway and service-station access lanes, parking-garage entrances and rest areas; with the reader in place, the description says, “it becomes possible automatically to associate tyres with a vehicle”; and two claims route the resulting indicators to “a motorway concession company and/or law enforcement personnel.” [82] Bridgestone’s US Patent 11,390,245, granted July 2022, has an in-vehicle reader check the car’s own tires against several databases, one of which holds the vehicle’s ID and the “contact information of the owner of the vehicle,” with responses that include “disabling the engine.” [83] Patents are not products; they show what the companies have thought about.

Speculative: a curbside reader on an ordinary street logging passenger tires at traffic speed. No document tests it. The companies’ own filings imply an antenna at hub height within one to three meters of the near-side wheels, which describes a toll lane or a garage entrance, not a highway gantry. [79][72] Even Goodyear’s own CheckPoint drive-over lane identifies vehicles by camera, with RFID optional, at a “Maximum crossing speed 2-10km/h.” [84][85]

There is a precedent for dismissing this worry and being wrong. In 2010 researchers at the University of South Carolina and Rutgers showed that tire-pressure sensors, which broadcast a fixed identifier every 60 to 90 seconds, could be decoded at 10.7 meters, or 40 with an amplifier, and captured from cars at highway speed; “it is evident that encryption has not been used,” they wrote. [86] A 2021 study did it with under $50 of equipment; a 2026 study by IMDEA Networks and the Swiss defense agency armasuisse ran receivers costing “as low as $100 per receiver” for ten weeks, logged more than 20,000 vehicles and received from around 55 meters. [87][88] Passive tire RFID differs in both directions. A pressure sensor broadcasts on its own; a passive tag is silent until a reader transmits, so a tracker must radiate up to four watts from within a few meters, which is detectable and location-bound. [7][72] But the tag’s identifiers are richer, two permanent, globally unique numbers that also disclose brand and model class, and the chips documented in tire tags have no cryptography. [75][89] And a pressure-sensor ID dies with its battery. The tire tag was designed never to die.

NHTSA asked the right question in 2019 and answered it with a read-range figure the report attributes to no test of its own. “For example, could roadside equipment scan the tires with the intention of logging every passing vehicle?” the report asked. [4] Its answer: “NHTSA’s research shows the key difficulty with this scenario is the relatively short distances over which either technology can be read,” and “License plates offer a much easier and more plausible roadside scanning scenario.” [4] Whether that survives Michelin’s toll-barrier patent, Goodyear’s 200-mph patent and Bridgestone’s stated aim of tags “that can communicate accurately from even greater distances” is a question NHTSA has not revisited on the record. [82][81][24] Nor is the equipment exotic: CDW sells a Zebra RFD40 Premium Plus handheld for $1,974.50 with “a robust 6 m read range,” and a SparkFun tutorial shows a hobbyist board reading tags and issuing password and kill commands. [76][90]

From a serial number to a name

If the tag holds no personal data, who holds the data that would connect it to a person? The answer runs through a regulation written for recalls and a contractor in Akron.

Under 49 CFR Part 574, every new tire’s DOT number is molded into the sidewall, and manufacturers, directly or through “a designee,” keep “Name and address of the tire purchaser,” the TIN and the seller “for a period of not less than five years.” [91] The rule’s only limit on using that information protects dealers: “No tire manufacturer shall use the information on the registration forms for any commercial purpose” that is “detrimental to tire distributors and dealers.” [91] Part 574 contains no reference to RFID, radio, transponders or chips; “electronic” appears four times, always about transmitting a form. [91] NHTSA counted 54 million manual registrations a year in 2018. [92]

Part of that data flows to Computerized Information and Management Services, Inc., CIMS, of Akron, Ohio, “Serving the Tire Industry for over 55 Years!” per its homepage. [93] CIMS pulls registrations from twelve named dealer point-of-sale systems so shops “can register 100% of the tires they sell”; a news item dated December 31, 2019, says Walmart selected it to handle tire registration; it lists Discount Tire and America’s Tire as registering entities; and a 2022 Federal Register notice records that it maintains one manufacturer’s registration database “for the purpose of identifying purchasers of tires” in a recall. [94][95][96][97] CIMS’s privacy-policy page, last modified June 28, 2021, says, in full: “TBD.” and “Come back soon!” [98]

Manufacturers’ notices vary. Michelin’s US privacy notice, updated August 28, 2026, lists the DOT code and VIN among personal data collected and states that, while it does not “sell” data “in the traditional sense,” it does “sell or share personal data for the purpose of displaying advertisements.” [99] Michelin’s warranty booklet says “We cannot use tire registration information for marketing purposes.” [21] Kumho’s warranty is categorical: registration data “will only be used for the purpose of notifying you regarding a recall.” [30]

The bridge between tag and registration is described, in Goodyear’s words, in NHTSA’s report: SGTIN-96 “leaves no room for the TIN in the tag’s EPC memory,” but “when the TIN is needed it can be recovered from a tire database, using the EPC as an index,” and “Permission can be given for entities to access all, or only a portion of, the database.” [4] GDSO’s private “dotTin” field is that index, built as an industry standard. [59]

The caveat: no document shows a tire maker joining a scanned serial to a registration record for anything but the purposes the law contemplates, and none shows a government agency asking. What the documents show is that both halves of the join exist, that the same company holds both, that the regulation puts no privacy limit on the second half, and that the consortium has built the field connecting them. And because a DOT number identifies a plant, a size and a production week while a tag serial identifies one tire, keying registration to the serial would, for the first time, tie a purchaser’s name to one specific tire instead of a batch. [91][1] Nobody has said that is the plan. Nobody has said it is not.

What the law says, and what it never imagined

American law has examined electronic tire identification once, and the subject was recalls.

The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of December 2015 carried a short “Tire Efficiency, Safety, and Registration Act,” sections 24331 to 24335. [100] Section 24333 ordered NHTSA to begin a rulemaking requiring independent dealers to register tires electronically; it sits at 49 U.S.C. 30117(b)(3) with no deadline, and as of October 2026 the registration rules at 49 CFR 574.7 and 574.8 still carry their last amendment date, November 2008. [101][91] Section 24334 ordered a study of putting “electronic identification on every tire.” [4]

The study came in March 2019. NHTSA found TIN-based tagging “would be technologically feasible,” that stakeholders priced it at 50 cents to a dollar per tire, and that “a full analysis of the costs and benefits” “was not performed in the context of this study.” [4] It recommended no mandate and concluded that electronic identification “provides no additional privacy risks when compared to other forms of identification present on vehicles.” [4] In 2008 NHTSA had said RFID “could supplement but not replace tire registration, given the current statutory requirement”; in January 2025 it called the Tire Industry Association’s single-contractor “TIN to VIN” registry “beyond the scope of this proposed rule.” [102][103][104]

The recall case is strong, which is partly why the privacy case has gone unmade. The National Transportation Safety Board found in 2015 that “NHTSA estimates that from 2009 to 2013, tire recall completion rates averaged about 44 percent,” that “Typically, a tire manufacturer physically recovers only about 20 percent of recalled tires,” and that independent dealers registered under 2 to about 10 percent of the tires they sold. [105][106] Every official actor frames the chip as a registration tool. None has addressed the chip after registration.

The Federal Trade Commission’s only word is a 2005 staff report recommending that notice “should advise consumers if an RFID tag or reader is present”; it is advice, not a rule. [107] The FCC governs how loud a reader may be, not what it may read. [72] Customs and Border Protection says its border-lane RFID readers “query applicable travel documents that are within the vehicle”; it does not say whether they log every tag that answers in the same band. [108]

State law was drafted for a different object. Washington’s chapter 19.300 reaches products: an “identification device” is any item that “uses radio frequency identification technology or facial recognition technology,” “issued” includes placing one in a product, scanning a person’s device remotely for an illegal purpose is a class C felony, and remote reading “for commercial purposes” by anyone but the issuer or its affiliates is a per se Consumer Protection Act violation, an exemption that leaves the tire supply chain outside it. [109] New Hampshire’s RSA 236:130 bars the state and its towns from determining a vehicle’s ownership or occupants on public roads by camera or other devices, radio frequency identification among them, with exceptions including tolling; it binds government only. [110] California’s statute covers identity documents, and the microchip-implant bans in Wisconsin and three other states are about bodies. [111][112] The tracking statutes assume a tracker someone installs: Texas punishes one who “knowingly installs an electronic or mechanical tracking device” on another’s vehicle, Virginia is built the same way, and Michigan adds a tracking offense but only for a device “designed or intended to be used to track the location of a motor vehicle.” [113][114][115] A 2025 Texas bill would have added an offense for using a device “to determine the location or movement of another person”; its fate is not in our files. [116] New York’s S6158 goes the other way, mandating RFID registration tags storing plate and VIN, “physically and electronically tamper-proof,” with no limit on who may read them. [117]

The constitutional backdrop is the familiar trio. Knotts: a driver “on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements.” [118] Jones: attaching a GPS tracker is a search, distinguished from Knotts because there the beeper “had been placed in the container before it came into Knotts’ possession, with the consent of the then-owner,” which is, uncomfortably, the fact pattern of a tire tag. [119] Carpenter: a privacy interest in “the whole of his physical movements,” in a ruling the Court called “a narrow one.” [120] The live test is the Flock license-plate-camera litigation: a Virginia ruling that the Norfolk network was not shown to track the whole of a person’s movements, now before the Fourth Circuit according to a University of North Carolina School of Government summary, and a Fifth Circuit appeal argued October 5, 2026, per press reports not independently verified here. [121][122] Each case turns on an identifier readable at a distance, fixed to a vehicle and logged at fixed points. The tire tag is such an identifier, and no court has been asked about it.

Every one of these laws pictures someone attaching a tag to you. None pictures one you buy, already cured into the product, built so you can’t take it out.

Nobody told the buyer

The Auto Wire checked the websites of 17 US tire sellers for any page discussing RFID in the tires they sell: Discount Tire, America’s Tire, Tire Rack, Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Pep Boys, Mavis, Les Schwab, Firestone Complete Auto Care, Goodyear Auto Service, NTB, Tire Kingdom, Belle Tire, Big O Tires, Town Fair Tire and Monro. Domain-restricted searches found nothing on the subject at any of them; the only hits were unrelated pages and, at Walmart, RFID-blocking wallets. [123][124] Michelin’s, Bridgestone’s and Goodyear’s registration pages ask for the printed DOT number and never mention a chip, and so does the USTMA’s. [125][126][127][128]

The industry knows the tag is invisible. Its 2022 bulletin says so and offers a remedy that is optional twice over: the ISO 29160 emblem is “one such suggested emblem which may be used,” or the manufacturer “may alternatively indicate the presence of the RFID tag by making the text ‘RFID’ somewhere visible.” [7] The one sidewall-marking patent we found, Goodyear’s US Patent 10,919,348, “Tire with RFID Locator,” filed in 2018 by two inventors based near the company’s Luxembourg technical center and issued February 16, 2021, gives its purpose: “it is desirable to visually communicate the RFID tag location to a technician.” [129] The consumer is not mentioned.

GS1, whose numbering the tags use, has had consumer guidelines for EPC/RFID products in force since January 1, 2005: notice through the EPC symbol on product or packaging, choice “to discard or remove or in the future disable EPC/RFID tags,” and, where a tag is embedded and cannot be removed, that buyers understand before purchase that it is there. [130] No tire, carton, receipt or retailer page we found carries the symbol.

The sharpest contrast is within one company. Michelin’s UK consumer page says “Once inserted into the tyre, the tyre identifier can’t be changed and the tag can’t be deactivated without damaging the tyre,” and explains who may read it. [14] There is no US equivalent. Michelin’s US owner’s manual, the file dated February 2026 but revised in May 2022, contains no occurrence of RFID, radio frequency, tag or chip. [21]

The only RFID mention in any US passenger-tire warranty we read is a disclaimer. Bridgestone and Firestone’s manual effective January 1, 2024, newly excludes damage from “The installation of tire accessories, including, without limitation: tire sensors or RFID tags,” a clause absent from the 2022 edition and kept in the 2025 Costco edition. [131][132][133] The language treats a tag as something a customer might add. It says nothing about one the factory may already have cured in. One press-reported item belongs here with a warning label: a trade publication reported in March 2004 that Goodyear, during Walmart’s supply-chain RFID program, planned tags that would be disabled at the point of sale for privacy reasons. The Auto Wire has not verified that against a Goodyear document. [134] If accurate, it describes a privacy design the 2021 guideline reversed.

What a driver can do today

Less than one would hope, and by design. There is no opt-out: no manufacturer or retailer offers an RFID-free line, and no US document says which lines are tagged, so even choosing by brand is guessing. There is no disclosure to ask for, and no documented way to find the tag short of a hand-held reader, which NHTSA noted in 2019 leaves tire owners “less likely to be able to read the RFID tags.” [4] There is no way to switch it off: the kill command is disabled by design, the identifier is permalocked, and Michelin says deactivation is “impossible” without damaging the tire. [1][14] Cutting into a sidewall to destroy a chip would wreck a safety-critical structure and fall inside any warranty’s abuse exclusions; The Auto Wire does not recommend it, and no document describes a practical shield for a tag in a rolling wheel.

What a driver can do is ask. Ask the shop, before the sale, whether the tires contain a tag, whether the store reads it, and whether the serial is kept with your invoice or registration. Ask the manufacturer, in writing, which US lines are tagged, what mark identifies them, and whether it has ever matched a tag read to a registration record. And ask lawmakers why a product sold with a permanent, unkillable radio identifier inside it carries no disclosure duty, when under the industry’s own GS1 guidelines a tagged shirt would come with a symbol and a notice. [130]

Last time you bought tires, did anyone mention there was a radio chip inside them, and would it have changed what you bought?

Sidebar: The questions no document answers

Each question is grounded in a specific gap in the record; the bracketed sources are where the gap appears. The Auto Wire has sent or will send these to the named parties and will publish every response in full.

Michelin

1. Which US plants (Greenville, Lexington and Starr, SC; Dothan and Tuscaloosa, AL; Ardmore, OK; Fort Wayne, IN) embed RFID in passenger and light-truck tires today, since what date, and what share of Michelin, BFGoodrich and Uniroyal tires sold in the US in 2025 and 2026 carried a tag? The 2020 announcement named only Europe, China, Thailand and Brazil, and the 2025 and 2026 pages still call universal tagging a goal. [18][19][14]
2. The UK consumer page says deactivation is “impossible” and explains consent rules for reading. Why is there no equivalent page, FAQ, owner’s-manual or warranty language for US buyers, and when will there be? [14][21]
3. Does a consumer who disables or cuts out a factory tag void any part of the US Replacement Limited Warranty? The Rev. 05/22 manual, still distributed in 2026, is silent. [21]
4. What sidewall marking identifies a tagged Michelin tire in the US, and is the “RFID technology” on the Pilot Sport Cup N4 the same SGTIN-96 tag used in truck tires? [20][7]
5. Your data service sells brand and size for a tag ID at one euro per call. Who holds the mapping from tag ID to DOT TIN and to registered purchaser, under what rules can police, insurers, toll operators or dealers obtain it, and has any US agency or litigant asked? [65][59]
6. Your site says the tag “can be read even when the tire is moving or rolling.” What is the maximum range you have measured for a passenger-tire tag from a fixed antenna, and have you tested or deployed fixed readers anywhere in the US? [5][79]
7. US Patent 11,562,601 describes reading tire tags at toll barriers and routing indicators to “law enforcement personnel.” Has Michelin offered, piloted or licensed that system to any toll operator or agency, in the US or elsewhere? [82]
8. Your US privacy notice lists the DOT code among personal data and says you “sell or share personal data for the purpose of displaying advertisements”; your warranty says “We cannot use tire registration information for marketing purposes.” Which DOT codes fall under which statement? [99][21]

Bridgestone and Firestone

9. Has Warren County begun shipping RFID-tagged truck and bus tires, on what date, and what share of Bridgestone and Firestone truck tires sold in the US today carry a factory tag? Completion moved from May 2024 to the end of 2026. [22][23]
10. The 2023 Integrated Report targeted “almost all” truck and bus tires in the US by 2030; the 2025 and 2026 reports do not mention RFID. Is the target still in force, and has the longer-range tag developed with TOPPAN Edge been commercialized? [24][25][26]
11. The 2024 US passenger warranty newly excludes damage from installing “tire sensors or RFID tags.” Does any Bridgestone or Firestone passenger tire sold in the US contain a factory tag, and how will the warranty distinguish a factory tag from an accessory? [131][132]
12. US Patent 11,390,245 describes an in-vehicle reader, a database holding the vehicle ID and the “contact information of the owner,” and engine disabling. Is any of it in development for a product? [83]
13. Do the IntelliTire routers at some 200 Pilot and Flying J sites, or the Drive-Over System, read RFID tags or identify vehicles by any means other than Bluetooth sensors, and is any identifier shared with Pilot? [135][136]

Goodyear and Cooper

14. Does any Goodyear, Cooper, Mastercraft, Kelly or Dunlop tire made or sold in the US contain a factory RFID tag today, including racing and off-road tires? No US statement since 2012 exists, and your 10-Ks mention RFID once, for Asia Pacific. [27][28][29]
15. The European CheckPoint page says vehicles are “identified via cameras or RFID.” Is CheckPoint installed at US sites, does its RFID option read tire-embedded tags, and how long is identification data kept in the Goodyear cloud? [85][84]
16. US Patent 11,641,053 reads a tire tag from the vehicle “up to about 200 mph.” Is a vehicle-mounted reader in any Goodyear or SightLine development program? [81]
17. You told NHTSA the TIN “can be recovered from a tire database, using the EPC as an index” and that permission can be granted to access “all, or only a portion of” it. Who has been granted access, and has any government body requested it? [4]
18. A 2004 trade report said Goodyear would design tags to be disabled at the point of sale for privacy reasons. Was that ever policy, and why does the 2021 guideline your engineer co-authored disable the kill function instead? [134][1]

Kumho

19. NHTSA recorded in 2019 that you tag all passenger, light-truck and truck tires except those made in China, with capability at your US plant since 2016. Is that true of Macon, Georgia output today, and what share of Kumho tires sold in the US carry tags? [4]
20. Why does no Kumho US page, FAQ or warranty mention the tag, and what does the April 2025 Beontag agreement change for US tires? [30][31][49]
21. Your warranty promises registration data “will only be used for the purpose of notifying you regarding a recall.” Does that promise extend to tag serials captured by dealers or in your warehouses? [30]

Continental and General Tire

22. Did the Conti HDR 5 and HSR 5 ship “RFID-equipped in 2024” as promised in February 2023, from which plant, and why do the June and October 2026 releases omit RFID? [32][34][33]
23. Are any passenger or light-truck tires from Sumter, South Carolina, under the Continental or General brands, tagged, and are they marked per the USTMA convention? [35][7]

Pirelli

24. Do any Pirelli road tires sold in the US carry passive RFID identification tags separate from Cyber Tire sensors, and will Cyber Tire tires built in Rome, Georgia, also carry an SGTIN tag? [36][137][37]
25. What data does the “always active and completely automatic” Cyber Tire sensor send to Pirelli, how long is it kept, and can a US owner opt out? [36]

Hankook, Yokohama, Toyo and Nexen

26. Hankook: does the Clarksville, Tennessee plant embed the RFID system described in your 2021 patent in any US-sold Hankook or Laufenn tire? [39][38]
27. Yokohama: has the “completed” development reached production at Salem, Virginia, or West Point, Mississippi, or in tires imported to the US, and when? [40]
28. Toyo: does the planned database of Toyo Group tires imply tagging of White, Georgia output, and on what timetable? [41]
29. Nexen: which lines and plants carry the “RFID-linked serialized identifier,” and are US-bound tires among them? [43]

GDSO

30. Does the resolver or the authentication service log the tag or product code queried, the requester’s IP address and the optional “country” parameter, for how long, and who can see those logs? The Terms say you “may monitor the use of API”; the FAQ says “no personal info used”; the Privacy Notice does not mention API logs. [63][61][64]
31. Which attributes are public and which private for each member, and why do the FAQ answers on public data, date of manufacture and sidewall data all say only to email you? [61][59]
32. How many production legal-entity accounts exist, how many tires resolve in the production service, and which of the ten US-selling members have live US endpoints? [62][54]
33. Who attended the May 21, 2026 Solon, Ohio workshop, what pilots and governance rules were adopted, and why was it hosted at a tag supplier instead of at USTMA or TIA? [66]
34. Can a vehicle owner obtain the data linked to the serial in their own tire, including “dotTin,” when your Terms define a User only as a legal entity? [63][59]
35. Under the Belgian-law Terms, is tracking individuals a prohibited use of the service? The enumerated restrictions bar uses that violate a “right to a private life” but never name tracking, vehicles or tire owners. [63]

GS1 and the RAIN Alliance

36. GS1: do the 2005 consumer guidelines apply to tires, and how is “Consumer Choice” satisfied for an embedded, permalocked, kill-disabled tag? Has GS1 ever reviewed the tire industry’s compliance? [130][1]
37. RAIN Alliance: what does the “FCC Petition” in your 2026 goals seek, what is the “DOT / FMCSA Funding Opportunity for RFID sensing,” and does the fleet tire-tracking paper in progress address driver privacy or data retention? [68][67]
38. Both: was a consumer-controllable kill or privacy mode considered and rejected when the 2021 guideline was drafted, by whom and why? [1]

USTMA and TIA

39. USTMA: which US-market tires carry the ISO 29160 emblem or “RFID” text your bulletin says “may” be used, why is marking optional, and does any member give notice on packaging, invoices or at the point of sale? [7]
40. USTMA and TIA: have you submitted comments to NHTSA, the FCC or FMCSA on tire RFID, and does TIA’s technician training teach dealers to read or disclose tags or to store serials with customer records? [128][138][104]

Hana RFID, Beontag, Avery Dennison and Murata

41. Which chips ship in US-market tire tags, are EPC permalock and kill-disable applied by default given Hana’s “with or without data lock” option, who holds the access password, and are any chip privacy features ever enabled? [16][15]
42. What is the measured read range and maximum vehicle speed at which a sidewall-embedded tag reads in a drive-by or drive-over configuration at 4 watts EIRP, and does Avery Dennison’s “up to 11 meters” apply to a passenger tire on a moving car? [3][139][72]
43. Hana: what are the terms of the Michelin license, and which US fleets, dealers or retailers attended the May 2026 workshop on your premises? [16][66]

Discount Tire, Tire Rack, Costco, Walmart and the other retailers

44. Do you tell buyers which tires carry embedded RFID, and why does no FAQ, warranty page or receipt mention it? [123][124]
45. Do any of your stores or distribution centers read embedded tags for receiving, inventory or point of sale, and is the serial stored against the customer’s invoice or registration record? [94]
46. Discount Tire and America’s Tire: as registering entities listed by CIMS, do you capture the tag serial at any point, and what are your retention and sharing rules for registration records? [96]
47. Walmart: does the CIMS arrangement register every tire sold automatically from the register, and are customers told? [95]

CIMS

48. Why has your privacy-policy page read “TBD” since at least June 2021? What are your sharing, retention and law-enforcement-request practices, and do any manufacturer clients send you RFID serials alongside DOT numbers? [98][140]

NHTSA

49. Eleven years after section 24333 ordered a rulemaking on electronic registration by independent dealers, 49 CFR 574.8 still carries a 2008 amendment date. Has an NPRM ever been published, under what RIN, and when is a rule expected? [91][101]
50. Your 2019 study put in-tire read range at under two feet without saying who measured it, how, or with what equipment. Who did, and have you tested current tags at the Part 15 power limit on mounted, rotating tires, and does the conclusion that “License plates offer a much easier and more plausible roadside scanning scenario” still stand against the industry’s 2023 patents? [4][82][81]
51. Does the agency know what share of new passenger tires sold in the US carry RFID, who holds the serial-to-TIN mapping, and whether it is available to NHTSA for recalls? [4][59]
52. Part 574’s only data-use limit protects dealers. Does NHTSA take any position on secondary use, sharing or sale of purchaser data by manufacturers or designees, and who are the current designees? [91]
53. Has the section 24335 tire-recall database searchable by TIN been established, and what are the most recent aggregate recall-completion and physical-recovery rates after the 44 percent and 20 percent figures for 2009 to 2013? [105][106]

FMCSA

54. Do any roadside, weigh-station or electronic-inspection concepts contemplate interrogating tire or wheel-end RFID tags, and what is the “DOT / FMCSA Funding Opportunity for RFID sensing” the RAIN Alliance cites? [68]

FTC

55. Does the Commission regard an undisclosed, non-removable RFID tag in a consumer durable as a material omission or an unfair practice under Section 5, given staff’s 2005 recommendation that notice “should advise consumers if an RFID tag or reader is present”? Has the FTC said anything on product RFID since 2005? [107]

FCC

56. What does the RAIN Alliance’s “FCC Petition” ask for, and would any change to Part 15 power or duty-cycle rules for tire reading be subject to public comment? [68][72]

CBP

57. Do border-lane RFID readers log every tag that responds in the 902 to 928 MHz band, tire tags included, or filter to travel-document identifiers, and are non-document reads retained in any system of records? [108]

State attorneys general and legislators

58. Washington: has the attorney general ever applied RCW 19.300.030 to a product-embedded tag, and does the issuer-and-affiliate exemption cover the entire tire supply chain? [109]
59. New Hampshire: does RSA 236:130 bar state or municipal readers at inspection stations or toll plazas that incidentally capture tire-tag serials, and has any guidance issued? [110]
60. Texas: did SB 797 become law, and would its “use” offense reach a private reader network keyed to tire tags? [116]
61. New York: S6158 would mandate RFID registration tags carrying plate and VIN with no access, logging or retention limits. Who may read them, and under what rules? [117]
62. Congress: the 2015 study asked only whether electronic tire identification is feasible, not who may read it. Will any member ask NHTSA or GAO to assess the privacy and access-control side, or revisit sections 24333 to 24335 in the next surface-transportation bill? [100][4]

Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions, Axon and other ALPR vendors

63. Have you evaluated, piloted or patented RFID sensing, including tire tags, alongside license-plate recognition, and has any customer requested it? Our searches of your product literature and the patent record found nothing, and you are best placed to confirm or deny. [82][121]

How this story was reported

This article is built from the companies’ and agencies’ own documents: product and support pages, warranty manuals, investor reports, press releases, patents, standards and guidelines, GDSO’s technical documentation and API specification, NHTSA’s 2019 Report to Congress, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, state codes and court opinions. Claims that rest on trade press alone were left out or, in two cases noted in the text, included with the statement that The Auto Wire has not independently verified them: a 2004 report on Goodyear’s point-of-sale deactivation plan, and press accounts of the Fifth Circuit’s pending Flock appeal.

Documents checked and found silent on RFID include Michelin’s US passenger warranty and owner’s manual and the BFGoodrich and Uniroyal manuals and FAQs; Bridgestone’s and Firestone’s 2019 and 2022 warranties, maintenance manual, FAQ and 2024 to 2026 US truck-tire releases; Goodyear’s and Cooper’s US warranties, FAQs, registration and product pages and 10-K filings since 2019; Kumho’s US homepage, FAQ and warranty; Continental’s US pages and the US truck-tire releases we could find after February 2023; Pirelli’s US Cyber Tire pages; the US homepages of Hankook, Yokohama, Toyo, Falken, Nexen and Nokian, and the FAQs of those that publish one; the 17 retailer websites named above; USTMA’s registration page; 49 CFR Part 574 in full; and CBP’s license-plate-reader privacy assessment. The full texts of ISO 20909 and 20910 are paywalled; GDSO’s Rules of Procedure, fees and full data referential are members-only; patent coverage is indicative, not exhaustive.

Every company and agency named here is invited to respond, to correct any statement it believes is wrong, and to answer the questions above. The Auto Wire will publish responses in full.

Sources

1. RAIN RFID Alliance (project led by GS1 Global Office), “Guideline for unique identification of tires based on the pertinent ISO Standards, using RAIN RFID tags with GS1 SGTIN encodings,” V1.0, issued April 26, 2021 (PDF) — https://therainalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RAIN_Guideline_for_tire_identification_v1.0_-_Final-2.pdf
2. Beontag, “RFID in Tire Manufacturing” case page (TireTag Gen4, 37 x 1.4 mm, developed with Michelin) — https://www.beontag.com/cases/rfid-tire-manufacturing-beontag-michelin-partnership/
3. Avery Dennison Smartrac press release, “AD Maxdura Tire Tag,” Glendale, California, September 8, 2021 — https://rfid.averydennison.com/en/home/news-insights/press-releases/avery-dennison-smartrac-launches-ad-maxdura-tire-tag.html
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6. US Patent 11,675,995 B2, Bridgestone Americas, priority January 11, 2018, granted June 13, 2023 (Google Patents) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US11675995
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9. ISO 20910:2019, “Coding for radio frequency identification (RFID) tyre tags,” catalogue page — https://www.iso.org/standard/69436.html
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50. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation), Official Journal text (EUR-Lex PDF) — https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32024R1781
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72. 47 CFR 15.247, Operation within the bands 902-928 MHz, 2400-2483.5 MHz, and 5725-5850 MHz (LII) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/15.247
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109. Revised Code of Washington, Chapter 19.300, “Electronic communication devices” (full chapter) — https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=19.300&full=true
110. New Hampshire RSA 236:130, “Highway Surveillance Prohibited” — https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XX/236/236-130.htm
111. California Civil Code section 1798.795 (FindLaw mirror) — https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-1798-795/
112. Wisconsin Statutes section 146.25 (Justia mirror) — https://law.justia.com/codes/wisconsin/chapter-146/section-146-25/
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114. Virginia Code section 18.2-60.5 — https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter4/section18.2-60.5/
115. Michigan Compiled Laws 750.539l — https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-750-539l
116. Texas SB 797, 89th Legislature (2025), introduced text (PDF) — https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00797I.pdf
117. New York Senate Bill S6158 (2025-2026), RFID registration tags (PDF) — https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2025/s6158
118. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983) (LII) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/460/276
119. United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) (LII) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-1259
120. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018) (LII) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-402
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126. Bridgestone US tire registration page — https://www.bridgestonetire.com/support/tire-registration/
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