In short, I gave up the free 21s downgraded to 19s.
I have never owned low profile tires before. I had done a bit of research on them before I finalized. The decision was simplistically easy to make. The hardest part in my head though was clicking the button to "give up a free $3500 option". It felt as if I was throwing $3500 away. However, not being short-sighted this is actually not true whatsoever. By downgrading for free and giving up $3500 up front, I am actually saving myself 10s of thousands of dollars throughout the lifetime of the vehicle (actually, probably even a hell of a lot more than that).
First, pretty much every online source I read said that low profile tires wear at least twice as fast as non low-profile tires. Sometimes even 3-4x faster. That was point 1.
Point 2, was that they are *very* prone to road damage. In these parts of the armpit of America, roads aren't really maintained. It's not uncommon to come up upon giant potholes and road hazards several times on a daily basis. One small mistake of not paying attention and you'll have a blowout. I have seen this happen on the road with other vehicles as I pass by. Obviously this would make the rims susceptible to damage and cracking too.
The third point is as simple as they suck in rainy and winter weather. Previously owning a `97 Camaro RS, which was the only other RWD car I had ever owned (the other two were AWD Murano and AWD Range Rover Evoque), I know that in rainy weather and winter around these parts I need as much traction as possible. I have fishtailed dozens of times in that Camaro. None of them ever ended up in any accident. One time was a complete 360 in the middle of an intersection (I was stopped at a red light and it turned green and I was the first vehicle turning left, so fortunately there was absolutely no traffic in the intersection), and the other major time was on an off ramp and it took me on up over the curb. Surprisingly no damage. The last major incident was as simple as losing traction in snow going less than 25 mph. I *very slowly* slid into a guard rail. I was going so slow it was like slow motion. I knew I was going to hit and there was nothing I could do about it. Only minor fender damage. Never had any traction issues with the Murano or Range Rover (although both of them has serious safety issues where it would cut out your gas pedal while you were driving it and you have 0 acceleration...but that's another story for another day).
Anywho, putting all 3 of those major points together, I am also a high mileage driver. Anywhere from 40-60k a year. So it's very easy to come to the conclusion that 19s are the way to go around here. I did not want to be spending $1500 for new sets of tires every other month. Very glad I made that decision considering the 21s on the Tesla seem to only be lasting 5-10k for people. I picked my car up in March and if I had the 21s I'd probably already be on my 4th set by now. I am not rich
Can't afford that kind of maintenance!
