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Range efficiency from tire change
- Thread starter zhu-
- Start date
Range loss depends not just on tire, but on wheels as well, and on driving style changes - if you gain all that extra traction from premium summer tires, one is always tempted to explore its larger traction envelope, with obvious impact on mileage. While I love how the car tracks on the 20" 235/35-20 tires, it makes it harder to drive really conservatively. When I do, I can get 200-220 whr/mi around town, and easily get 250 in mixed driving.
Once a tire is mounted, NO ONE will be willing to buy it back (unless it's obviously defective), so that's not something even Tesla is likely to even consider.
What you should consider is how much safety (tires being one of your most important safety features in emergencies) and optimizing traction across the temperature extremes is worth to you, both in terms of cash out of pocket and in terms of range impact. Everyone concedes that the best option is seasonal switches between full summer and full snow tires. The best summer tire hands down, is the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S. It's simply amazing, and while it is a reduced rolling resistance design, it probably will cost you a modest amount of range (10-15% at least) over the 18 inch aero wheels with Primacy AS tires, in part simply due to the loss of the aero wheels, particularly if you go to 235/35-20 4S (losing the aero wheels). Perhaps one cost effective option would be to keep the 18" aero wheels, and get a set of Michelin 4S in the 235/45-18 size. They will be dramatically better in the summer, but you will need snows or AS in the winter and they are simply dangerous to drive on in the colder winter regions, even if there is no snow, due to how their tread compounding makes them bricks once temperatures drop much below 40. Another option is the Michelin Pilot Sport AS3+ - hands down the best AS, and quite adequate in lighter snow. This keeps you in one tire all year round. They are hugely better than the stock AS in terms of handling and braking performance (not far off the pace of the 4S tire in warmer and moderate temps), but even with the aero wheels, you might experience several percent at least of range reduction - but probably not hugely in terms of whr/mi if you keep the aero wheels. You just have to decide if saving max range is worth the traction and performance compromises. It's all tradeoffs. Personally, I think the AS3+ is the best cost/benefit option, saving you the grief of either buying another set of wheels, or mounting and unmounting tires every fall and spring. The 4S during the summer is the best option if you want to max the Sports Sedan aspects of the Model 3.
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Right, that's what I'm trying to figure out. If I upgrade to heavier 19's with PS4S, I will likely be driving more aggressively so the range will take a hit - which in these scenarios I would happily trade the range for. But if I drive the exact same speed and acceleration as with stock aeros will it still be a big impact or only a few percentage points instead?
My Mercedes dealership has always offered to buyback tires if I send them something else to put on pre-delivery so certainly not the case with every dealership.
And this point I'm sure will be controversial and many will disagree, but I have driven Continential contisportcontact 5 ssr summer tires during the winter in 20 degree temperatures and in non-snow conditions they still perform better than all-seasons in both my RWD C63 and AWD C300. Driving in any snow would be risky and dangerous but I personally have not found low temperatures to be of any issue for summer tires, at least mine specifically. Has there been any actual tests showing significantly reduced performance below the level of an all-season during cold temps?
Yes, you can get dealers sometimes to work a deal to buyback existing (crappy) tires on new vehicle (I've done that myself), but that's still different from buying, mounting and then rejecting (and expecting a buy back) on a set of tires on a car you already own. That's a much tougher sell for a dealer - if you can talk someone into it, great, I just wouldn't bet on it happening in 99.8% instances.
As for the report about the Conti summers being ok in cold temps, I think that may be because they use a softer compounding and sidewall than Michelin in their summer tire formulations - part of why they may fall behind in most summer tire tests. I still wouldn't recommend that, and the Michelin Super Sports and the Pilot Sport 4S (descended from the Michelin SS) are simply deadly on roads at 20 F, in emergency situations. They just have no grip at all.
No one has definitive data on range reductions from max economy tires to max AS (Michelin AS3+) to max summer performance. But you can expect that there will be a highway vs. city range reduction difference, as the faster you go, the less difference less rolling resistance makes. It's still there, but it becomes a smaller and smaller fraction, as drag becomes the larger and larger fraction as highway speeds go up. And it is proportional to the square of the speed, AFAIK. I would peg the difference of max range to max performance tires, on the same wheel and same size, at somewhere around a 10-15% range reduction around town at a minimum. Tire pressure also makes a difference, so if you keep your pressures at the high end of recommended, that may help too.
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EPA rules allow manufacturers to use a particular option configuration as the test vehicle. The performance is apparently being classified as an option of the normal AWD.
I base this on the fact that the most recent published EPA results (dated October 2018 - see here: https://www.epa.gov/sites/productio...vehicle-test-results-report-2014-present.xlsx) only have records of two tests for the Model 3 - one in 2017 for the RWD and one in 2018 for the AWD. Those results are apparently being applied to all Tesla Model 3 variants (the MR may be too recent to be reflected in these data and will need its own test).
So basically the 20" wheels/tires are irrelevant - it wasn't the configuration used for the EPA numbers, which appears perfectly permissible under current rules.
That made sense before because you could choose to have the 18" wheels on the P3D. But now all came with 20" wheels. It is no longer a configuration that could be chosen by customer. Could they put on 16" super light weighted wheel/tires and do the test and then give you no option of getting them with the car? Just wondering...
You're thinking of the P as a separate model.
I think from the EPA ratings perspective all the AWD variants (including the Performance) are simply versions of the same car. So the options (considering only the power limiter settings and wheel size) are/were:
1. Power limiter, 18" wheels
2. Power limiter, 19" wheels
3. Performance 20" wheels
4. the now defunct Performance 18" wheels
The fact that option 4 was eliminated doesn't matter because option 1 appears to be the reference configuration they used for all AWD variants anyway.
The whole EPA process is flaky to begin with - great as a general guideline but very inexact. YMMV
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