Tyres on SR+. All weather?

[Foucault]

Totally agree with Big_G. Had winters on my AMG Mercedes and could be quite 'entertaining' in cold weather! A friend, who had ta similar car, did about £6K damage when his car span into a central reservation when only doing about 30mph on a couple of millimetres of snow. Needless to say he's had winter tyres ever since. I also recounted in another thread how I drove through light snow and thought it was a bit slippery but not too bad. Got home fine, stepped out of my car and promptly fell on my bottom! It's not just about snow too as can help with icy and wet roads. They don't work as well as summer tyres in the dry, but not something we see too much of in UK winters.

On the subject of Tesla's winter wheels, do we know if they definitely come with Pirelli tyres i.e. the same as the US shop? As Cogarch mentions above they don't score too well compared to recent released winter tyres from Goodyear, Continental and Michelin. If that's the case may just go for wheels from Tesla and source tyres elsewhere.

 

[ivangr]

Anyone who says we dont need winter tyres in this country clearly hasn't driven with winter tyres to appreciate the difference. I currently drive a ICE RWD car with 420bhp, on summer tyres in winter it'll kill you. Summer tyres generally dont perform well below 7 degrees, the tread stiffens up and becomes solid which means you have no traction. The compound on winter tyres stays softer at lower temperatures which provides better grip. People have this assumption that winter tyres are only applicable in several feet of snow when the reality is far from it, i switch over to my winters late oct/beginning nov and then switch back usually late April. Last year in the snow i was watching VWs, Audis, etc struggling in the slush/snow/ice, car sliding around, whereas i just drove straight past them.
For reference i'm not even using premium winters, i've got Nexen Winguard Sport 2 which were around £100 a corner. They're invaluable.

my experience exactly. had a RWD mercedes that had to be driven at 15mph on icy roads because the summer tyres would just slip out.

 

[MrBadger]

On the subject of Tesla's winter wheels, do we know if they definitely come with Pirelli tyres i.e. the same as the US shop? As Cogarch mentions above they don't score too well compared to recent released winter tyres from Goodyear, Continental and Michelin. If that's the case may just go for wheels from Tesla and source tyres elsewhere.

The Tesla winter wheel package consists of

TBH the Sottozero's don't seem to perform bad, just not quite as well as newer design tyres.

 

[Foucault]

Thanks for confirming Tesla go for Pirelli winter tyres. There’s actually a very good summary of very similar sized winter tyres by German car magazine Autobild on the tyre reviews website 2018 Autobild UHP Winter Tyre Test - Tyre Reviews. From their testing it looks like the Pirelli tyres are very good in the dry, not so good in snow (not that there was much difference) but not great in the wet apart from aqua planning. They did have low rolling residence, which will help winter range. All tyres are a compromise and it looks, at least from this test, that Pirelli have favoured dry performance and snow over wet performance. Regardless of the score they are still likely to be better than summer tyres in winter.

 

[Jonslatt]

Just a word of caution with winter tyres. I had a set on my Lexus GS300 a few years ago. A RWD car it made an enormous difference. The issue I had was that I stopped a lot quicker than almost every other car on the road
More than a few times I had cars almost pile into the back of me as they slid and I didn’t. Coupled with the M3 phantom braking it could be a recipe for disaster.
Not sure how you could mitigate against this other than keep it slow and steady and not use any form of AP in wintery conditions.

 

[Foucault]

To be honest AP is so flaky and at times downright dangerous, I’ve given up using it. Agree though that you do worry about being rear ended by a car that can’t stop as quickly.