An an EV owner, I can testify that the tyre wear more than makes up for the reduction in brake dust. I’ve had to change tyres every 10K miles.
The other thing is poor alignment (especially toe settings) which cause the tyres to fight each other constantly. It can be a very small difference, almost imperceptible but still accelerate the wear.
10k miles is very short for a tyre.
Often you can tell a lot from the tyre temperature after a drive: if they're getting very warm, it can indicate problems, e.g. if one axle has much warmer tyres than the other (hard to give an objective standard on that, though, so many factors)
A friend got hit by this as well and since readjusting his driving style (read: not flying through corners for the fun of it) he gets more (but still not equal) miles on his EV's tires before he needs new ones.
I assure you. If your EV tires are only lasting 10K miles you have one of the following cases:
- You are driving VERY aggressively
- Your car has an alignment issue or some sort of torque vectoring problem
- Your tires are absolute shit
Cheap tyres are often a bad investment, but I drive country lanes with a higher risk of punctures and I was burning through brand name tyres, a full set is worth more than my car!
Alignment is fine, had it checked when I had a new set of continentals fitted.
My problem is purely that I drive like an asshole, on very windy, empty roads. Every day is track day.
Decent tyres, too, continentals - soft compound, hard roads. Means it corners like a dream right up until the tyres are bald.
If driving Tesla, you can reduce the regenerative breaking from Maximum setting to Medium.
this will reduce regeneration and will increase the "breaking distance" when you just let go of accelerator pedal.
but it will increase your tire life significantly.
also make sure to buy the "commuter tire" models - tires with high mileage warranty (50k miles+) and harder compound. Even if it wears out faster, tire manufacturer's warranty will make up for it by giving you discount for the replacement tire purchase
by reducing regeneration, you will increase tire life by virtue of modifying your acceleration behavior. Its hard for me to explain, but I just suggest trying the medium regenerative setting and you will see it yourself.
You will feel it, because the most of the tire wear happens when car decelerates. On less regeneration your car will decelerate less and will wear out tires slower
I could come up with a list of plausible sounding reasons why regenerative braking leads to less tire wear. Unless you have some actual measurements, I wouldn't trust either one.
I'll also throw another anecdote in for this thread, 500hp EV, 50k miles on the tyres.
Is this generally true? I imagine it depends on the car/driver to a certain extent, but still I'd be curious what numbers are out there.
Up to 60% goes back to battery, part goes to air resistance and rolling tire resistance (can be ignored for our case as its the same regardless of regen setting), the rest goes to friction of tire/road due to slowing down tire speed
The two claims you've made are that deceleration results in more tire wear than acceleration, and that regenerative deceleration results in more tire wear than non-regenerative deceleration. These are what people are questioning you about.
what is relevant to prolong the tire lifetime is reducing the unnecessary tire friction against the road.
There is constant component that depends on the weight * velocity * mileage - you gonna encounter it in all scenarios
There is also a variable component that is driven by 1st derivative of speed (rate of acceleration/deceleration).
The high regeneration allows you faster acceleration/deceleration, but medium/lower will (1) change your driving behavior so that you accelerate more smoothly, and (2) change your deceleration so that you coast more and decelerate less
remember, car's kinetic energy is not a perfect energy storage, so that you could freely move energy from battery into car speed, and regenerate it back into battery.
apart from air resistance, there is 60% loss on the way back + tire wear penalty depending on accel/decel curve (1st speed derivative)
No, it doesn’t. The tires don’t care if it’s the car’s motor slowing things down, or some friction material grabbing a disc.
But my inlaw has a neo from new and hasn't replaced the tyres yet, and hes an auto obsessive. He lives in the midlands and drives 18k a year.
I'm likely to end up replacing mine based on age-related degradation rather than wear.
I've got a Model 3 Performance which came with the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires which are only warrantied for 30,000 miles. I had them for 5 years and 35,000 miles and they STILL had plenty of tread left. I had to replace them anyways because I hit a nasty pothole that caused the tread to separate.
Lower profile rims also beat up tires way harder if you drive hard because the lack of sidewall flex lets you put more force to the ground which has to go through the tread of the tire to get there.
Modern tires for modern cars also bias toward soft and high wearing because there's pretty much no other way to keep higher end vehicles stuck to the ground with the power to weight they're making these days.
How could you possibly measure that just from your personal experience?
Sounds more like a wild guess that is in contradiction with actual studies.
Simple napkin math by comparing longevity of parts with volume of parts consumed.
FWIW I think the qualitative difference between tire and brake dust is going to mean a lot more than individual variance.
And tires of course aren't created equally. There are many different types of tires and they are optimized for different circumstances. If you mismatch your tires to e.g. weather conditions, you are going to have issues. Not just with EVs, but with any car.
I can vouch for the very low brake pad usage as well.
> "Even when summing up emissions from tires, brakes, and road wear, BEVs produce 38% less particulate pollution than gas-powered cars before even considering their lack of tailpipe emissions."
There’s no good reason why you should be changing your tires at 10k miles.
Next time get tires with a 50k mile warranty, like Pirelli Scorpions.
1) Aggressive driving which is easier to do in a number of EVs due to instant torque. 2) tire compound, a lot of oem tires are soft 3) something wrong with the cars drivetrain or suspension.
10k is comically low, my model y oem tires lasted to 30k before tread depth passed the safety threshold. I also keep it in chill mode.
Of course the tyre companies love that little trick as they can pretend they are being green while selling more tyres.
Always check how much tyre you’re buying
I know road damage is far higher (fourth power of weight) so maybe wear on tires is also worse than linear?
heavier vehicles are also worse in many other ways (e.g. less safe for pedestrians, require more space for parking,...) and we really should be encouraging smaller vehicles.
Accelerating and decelerating, in regards to the tire, don't care what is causing the force.
The Model X's curb weight ranges from 5,148 lbs to 5,531 lbs, while the Telluride's curb weight falls between 4,112 lbs and 4,482 lbs.
The tires are doing the stopping. As you said the engine is the part that doesn't matter. But if it increases the stopping power, it's doing that by increasing the load on the tires.
I know I know, people aren't supposed to be taking off from every light at full chat, but, given the capability some people can't help themselves.
What this means is that you can push tires to the absolute limit and not chirp them (which, is best for traction anyways) which absolutely roasts them. Most people associate chirp = too fast, but with EVs you can never hear a chirp even when you stomp on the accelerator so they might think everything is ok.
Nobody should be shredding a set of tires in 10k miles in any EV unless they’re super low tread wear (poor tire choice, hard to do that bad), there’s an issue with the car suspension, or they’re just being idiots.
Though it might fall under the "being idiot" category.
If you're track racing, it should be obvious you'll blow through a set of tires much faster than the treadwear ratings would suggest.
Although I may drive a bit more sensibly for now as €4K a year on tyres wasn’t in my budget.
- evs have a reputation for fast acceleration, and many drivers use it. More wear.
- evs are heavy due to large batteries trying to match ICE range. More wear.
- evs often come with low friction tires to improve range, they wear faster
The second two issues should gradually go away as battery (and charging) tech improves.
They're not low friction tires, they're low rolling resistance tires.
Friction relates to the grip, rolling resistance relates to the heat generated by the deformation of the tire. A less compliant, often narrower tire may wear faster than a more compliant wider one.
It depends.
"Tyres account for about a fifth of the energy required to power a car. They provide friction, so that the vehicle can grip the road, but some of the power supplied to the tyres is then lost as heat. Indeed, Michelin, a French tyremaker, estimates that this “rolling resistance” accounts for 4% of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions. Tyre designers have therefore sought to improve fuel economy by reducing rolling resistance. However, this not only reduces a tyre's ability to grip, making drivers take corners sideways, it also wears out the tyres more rapidly."
from: https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2009/12/02/ro...
without login: https://archive.is/TiIUk
Those two attributes are pretty decently tied together, can't get one attribute maxed out without a solid showing of the other.
Some of the lowest rolling resistance tires also last 80k+ miles. It's not a tradeoff in the way you're claiming.
https://www.cars.com/articles/do-evs-wear-through-tires-more...
I leave it in eco mode, so acceleration is nerfed, too.
We’ll see how long the new set of Michelin Defenders last.
Performance oriented EVs, just like performance oriented ICE cars, are going to have softer, stickier tires that wear faster.
brtkwr has a Kia Niro, not a Taycan. It's not a performance vehicle.
That said, I agree he's likely got tires with shit longevity.