Seems like this was de-bunked reading the comments [1], the system would have to be incredibly huge considering the RFID tag inside the tire is only a few inches (so it is not generating a very far field - the 20 feet seems incredibly far for such a small tag).

On top of that it would be far easier to just track the giant visible license plate since we already have that technology available.

The destroying with a camera flash is legit (not because of the flash but because of what seems to be caused by capacitors in the device - light reading on this so I may not be correct) however many users point out why read that when there are much easier ways to track a vehicle where-a-bouts.

Interesting and disturbing however much more complex then just OCR!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3kl3e9/which_manuf...