I removed mine and can still use buttons on fob to lock and unlock. I think that’s just a proximity sensor that enables passive unlocking when you are close to the car with the key.
The approach I took to wire thinning was to unplug the modules I wanted to remove , then wait and see whether things went sideways. Everything in the trunk is now gone, along with the wires that fed them. TPMS needs to be coded out.
FYI, the little plastic box under the driver’s seat on the floor is a gyro critical to stability control, and things do literally go sideways when that is removed.
