I am about to pull the trigger on the purchase of summer rims and tires package for my 16 IS350 AWD Fsport and I am getting them to clone my stock TPMS Sensors

I can query the cars current TPMS ID’s using Carista and OBD Fusion with a Carista Dongle - Which is what I am hoping to send to the Wheel shop so that I can just pick up my wheels.

My question is … Do I need to send my installer the locations (FL, FR, RL, RR) of each TPMS or will the the car automagically determine where each TPMS is ?

It seems to do this in my 18 Tacoma TRD Off road where ID1 is in location3, ID2 at Location4, ID3 at location 1 and ID4 at location 2 when I check via OBD Fusion. Since I have rotated the wheels once on my Tacoma (Im the first owner) it seems to indicate it doesn’t matter.

Any Wheel installers know if the location matters when Cloning TPMS’s?

Lexus TPMS system does position identification automatically, it has two initiators. No need to worry about location.

keep in mind though that you might not get pressure readings in the dash.

I have cloned sensors for the winter and i'm not getting pressure infos, but the system does still work if I deflate a tire... Over that last 4 winters, I managed to have the pressures on the dash once, after swaping left tires, but I did some other testing and never was able to explain why...

sounds like the cloned sensors were just the wrong type? they did not send out the PSI information in a format the lexus system used.

What brand sensor did you use? reporting the actual tire pressure psi and the tire location is a pretty important function, unless you want to go hunting for the ONE low one and waste 20 minutes

They are the correct type, if they were not, they simply would not work at all. It's something about the initializing procedure when the car starts up.
They are Ez-sensor if I'm not mistaken.

Most compatible aftermarket TPMS sensors don't show the pressures...or don't show it consistently.
If you access the vehicle via Techstream or Carista (or similar) you will see the pressures in there, just not on the dash.
In other parts of the world the IS doesn't show pressures even with OEM sensors...that's just the way they are built.
Unfortunately the OEM sensors are the only ones, so far, that show pressures 100% of the time.

I don’t know for sure, but I doubt that TireRack supplies OEM sensors, and I’ve had no problems with the ones that came in the winter wheel/tire package I bought from them several years ago.

Do you know what brand the sensors are? Or was it indicated on an invoice in any way what they might be?
The OEM sensors are made by Pacific Industrial...in theory if you bought a set of those sensors they should work the same as OEM, as they are the supplier of the OEM part.

Some other members have mentioned that they have aftermarket sensors that would show the pressures the majority of the time, but still not at the same level of performance as OEM...but certainly close enough to be good enough.

Well I’ll be damned, think you’re right. I’ll have to find the paper invoice from the order to be sure, but the online record of my purchase lists the manufacturer part number as ‘T5’, and some googling showed that T5 is indeed a Pacific part number for a 315 MHz TPMS sensor.

That would explain the flawless operation you're had.
I guess the theory is basically proven now.