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This is fake news. The backing study for this claim did all sorts of wonky unrealistic testing to come to this conclusion. If you own an EV, you viscerally know

This is fake news. The backing study for this claim did all sorts of wonky unrealistic testing to come to this conclusion. If you own an EV, you viscerally know it's BS given that you're the one paying for the actual tire replacements on your real-world driven vehicle.

bfgeek 2y ago
To add to this, (from what I remember reading the study at the time) it was basically racing a car around a track (think lots of tyre squealing around corners), and found that the tyre wear was very high. I haven't seen a study which actually simulates somewhat "normal" driving (presumably because the wear is so low driving like that it's difficult to measure). Also didn't factor in a bunch of different stuff - tyres are effected by lots of things; compound, temperature, pressure, surface abrasion, etc. There might be an effect! But this study was very bad.
- chongli 2y ago
  A normal driving test was (famously [1]) done to measure the effect of axle load (vehicle weight per axle) on road wear. This is where we got the “fourth power law” of road wear. I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear, given the same tires on each vehicle. From this, I would expect car makers to use larger, thicker, heavier tires on heavier vehicles in order to compensate. Thus I think we shouldn’t accept claims about the replacement lifecycle of tires without knowing these details of their construction. If an electric car is twice the mass of an older ICE car then the fourth power rule would predict a 16-fold increase in road wear. I would then expect the tires on the EV to have 16 times more rubber in order to last the same duration, unless they’re made of some newer compounds which are more durable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test
  - bfgeek 2y ago
    > I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear IMO this would be a suspect assumption to make w/o data to back it up. You've got two dissimilar materials interacting (in very different modes). E.g. rolling a metal ball bearing on a wood surface would obviously cause the wood to degrade far more than the ball bearing, (and even a wooden ball rolling on a wood surface would wear substantially less due to the mode difference). (If I had to guess the road has a higher wear as the surface has a tensile stress around the contact patch of the tyre, causing most of the damage, but this is just armchair engineering at this stage).
    - chongli 2y ago
      You quoted me out of context by cutting off a very important qualification to my statement: given the same tires on each vehicle I don’t endorse the broader statement which would imply the same wear regardless of tire material. That claim is clearly false.
      - bfgeek 2y ago
        The point I was after to make is that you can't assume that road wear scales the same way as tyre wear (I was assuming same material fwiw, just different loads). They are being worn under very different modes/scenarios.
        chongli 2y ago
        Given that roads and tires experience the same forces under driving conditions (Newton’s Third Law guarantees this) I think it’s a reasonable prior assumption to start from. There are of course other environmental factors that accelerate road wear (rain and water erosion, freeze thaw expansion) but those conditions were not included in the study that produced the Fourth Power Law.
  - _benedict 2y ago
    This assumes that road wear and tyre wear are caused by the same mechanism, but tyre wear is presumably caused predominantly by friction, whereas road wear is at least in part (and perhaps predominantly) caused by compression, creating pot holes by causing the earth underneath to move.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      It's quite noticeable (to me at least) that the areas with highest wear are usually places that have heavy vehicles (buses and lorries) braking and accelerating. Traffic lights and bus stops will often have bumps/dips that seem to demonstrate a shearing force between the road surface layers.
      - _benedict 2y ago
        I have always assumed it was just due to the uneven distribution of weight by vehicles often being stationary in the same spot, so those points are subject to more compression forces than the surrounding road surface. If it were acceleration and deceleration I’d have expected the effect to be less localised, as breaking and accelerating happens over a much longer distance. But, I have no actual idea. It’s just probably not friction…
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  I'm surprised there isn't more info available to compare vehicles/tyre wear. There's plenty of real-world driving going on, so you'd think someone would have measured tyre replacement frequencies.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Tires and driving styles vary a lot, so it would be really hard to come up with some aggregate numbers. Maybe you could compare the same very popular tire on different cars that still have enough data points to average out differing factors?
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      I reckon that the different driving styles could be partially dealt with by considering different classes of car. E G. Fast "prestige" cars will tend to share certain driving styles and be quite different to cheaper run-arounds. Ideally, it'd be great if insurance companies made a big push to get some kind of standardised "black box" that drivers could fit. As well as providing extra stats, I think they'd be great for detecting illnesses. A simple driving ability stat could be produced from the typical acceleration/braking timings - smoother is better as it shows good anticipation by the driver. If their stat starts decreasing more than expected due to aging etc. then the driver could be alerted that they should consult a doctor as it could cognitive decline, eye problems etc.
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I don't think it's fake as there's plenty of reports that EVs do go through tyres quicker. A quick search brings up many articles on the phenomenon e.g. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-with-evs-they-tire-quickly https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-with-evs-t...
- jeffbee 2y ago
  There's nothing categorical about EVs that make them eat tires. The aggregate data about average EV tire life is skewed by the relative popularity of and poor choices made by Tesla.
  - croes 2y ago
    But we agree that heavier cars have more tire wear. And EV cars tend to be heavier then comparable combustion cars.
    - thebruce87m 2y ago
      > According to a 2022 study from the Environmental Protection Agency, the average weight of a car is 4,094 pounds. https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/ https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/ Model 3 Curb Weight: 3,552–4,048 lb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3
      - croes 2y ago
        Model S 4,323 – 4,960 lbs Model X 5,248 lbs Model Y 4,209 - 4,363 lbs So what’s your point? That EV cars exist that are less heavy than the average car? That’s not why I said, I said comparable combustion cars are less heavy than their EV counterpart.
        thebruce87m 2y ago
        If that’s your point why didn’t you provide any comparisons to equivalent ice models? Let’s look at some comparisons since that is your point: > Starting with the Tesla Model 3 weighing in at between 1777Kg and 1840Kg > A comparable ICE car the BMW 3 series 1570Kg - 1965Kg > And another ICE car the Mercedes C class 1665Kg - 2190Kg > And finally another EV the Ford Mustang Mach-E 1993Kg - 2218Kg https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-perception-of-Tesla-cars-being-heavy-compared-to-other-cars-Is-there-a-significant-difference-in-weight-between-Tesla-models-and-other-cars https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-perception-of-Tesla-cars-b... So there’s not much in it. EVs do tend to be 10-15% heavier for the same model in EV vs ICE but the point is brought up constantly as if they are twice as heavy, or at least significantly heavier. In reality picking a model 3 would for your next car would bring the average weight of US new cars down which I think is interesting, no?
vehemenz 2y ago
Heavier vehicles wear down tires faster. Visceral intuitions can't really compete with physics here.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  When more so if they have more torque.
what-the-grump 2y ago
I mean... yes/no? EVs are on AS slicks, the tyre itself has less tread on it than something like CrossClimate 2. Overall they are replaced quicker and eat tread quicker. Its ~50% difference. I have both ICE and EV. The new tyres that are coming out like Pirelli P Zero, promise a longer life span, but that remains to be seen.
hansvm 2y ago
Maybe, but the average Tesla tire lasts half as long as my tires typically do, and the extra weight from the battery combined with the high onset torque are likely culprits (the former of which you can't fix with current battery technology when comparing otherwise apples-to-apples ICEs vs EVs if the EVs have non-negligible range, and the latter of which would require artificial limiting on the electric motor (which companies don't want to do because it's a selling point)). For some rough numbers under normal/factory configurations to consider: - A semi truck converts around 0.9 milliliters of tire to dust per kilometer. - A Tesla Model Y clocks in at 0.3 ml/km - A Honda Fit clocks in at 0.1 ml/km Even with an overestimate of semis being responsible for 10% of total miles driven in the US, if everyone drove a Model Y then passenger cars would be responsible for 3x more tire dust than semis, and if everyone drove a Honda Fit then you'd be down to 1x. Are there bigger concerns out there? Probably. Is the solution to bias toward ICE instead of EV? Probably not. It's not worth burying our heads in the sand when making those decisions though.
- YZF 2y ago
  What specific tires do you have on those vehicles? Performance motorcycle tires wear much faster than non-performance (or your average car tire). Sportier car tires generally have softer compounds that wear faster. How you drive your vehicle also has an impact. Tire pressure.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The weight difference between a Model 3 and the average new car sold in the US is a negative number. The Model 3 is slightly lighter than the average new car. So the difference comes entirely from torque. But you could just... not have such a heavy foot.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    The difference also comes from the grippier tires on the Model 3, the total tread volume on those tires compared to a smaller car, and that the Model 3 compared to the average car isn't apples to apples if you're looking at tire wear for ICE vs EV (to be fair, my car's too light to be apples to apples either, but if you look at comparably sized cars the Model 3 is heavier).

bfgeek 2y ago

To add to this, (from what I remember reading the study at the time) it was basically racing a car around a track (think lots of tyre squealing around corners), and found that the tyre wear was very high. I haven't seen a study which actually simulates somewhat "normal" driving (presumably because the wear is so low driving like that it's difficult to measure). Also didn't factor in a bunch of different stuff - tyres are effected by lots of things; compound, temperature, pressure, surface abrasion, etc. There might be an effect! But this study was very bad.

chongli 2y ago
A normal driving test was (famously [1]) done to measure the effect of axle load (vehicle weight per axle) on road wear. This is where we got the “fourth power law” of road wear. I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear, given the same tires on each vehicle. From this, I would expect car makers to use larger, thicker, heavier tires on heavier vehicles in order to compensate. Thus I think we shouldn’t accept claims about the replacement lifecycle of tires without knowing these details of their construction. If an electric car is twice the mass of an older ICE car then the fourth power rule would predict a 16-fold increase in road wear. I would then expect the tires on the EV to have 16 times more rubber in order to last the same duration, unless they’re made of some newer compounds which are more durable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test
- bfgeek 2y ago
  > I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear IMO this would be a suspect assumption to make w/o data to back it up. You've got two dissimilar materials interacting (in very different modes). E.g. rolling a metal ball bearing on a wood surface would obviously cause the wood to degrade far more than the ball bearing, (and even a wooden ball rolling on a wood surface would wear substantially less due to the mode difference). (If I had to guess the road has a higher wear as the surface has a tensile stress around the contact patch of the tyre, causing most of the damage, but this is just armchair engineering at this stage).
  - chongli 2y ago
    You quoted me out of context by cutting off a very important qualification to my statement: given the same tires on each vehicle I don’t endorse the broader statement which would imply the same wear regardless of tire material. That claim is clearly false.
    - bfgeek 2y ago
      The point I was after to make is that you can't assume that road wear scales the same way as tyre wear (I was assuming same material fwiw, just different loads). They are being worn under very different modes/scenarios.
      - chongli 2y ago
        Given that roads and tires experience the same forces under driving conditions (Newton’s Third Law guarantees this) I think it’s a reasonable prior assumption to start from. There are of course other environmental factors that accelerate road wear (rain and water erosion, freeze thaw expansion) but those conditions were not included in the study that produced the Fourth Power Law.
- _benedict 2y ago
  This assumes that road wear and tyre wear are caused by the same mechanism, but tyre wear is presumably caused predominantly by friction, whereas road wear is at least in part (and perhaps predominantly) caused by compression, creating pot holes by causing the earth underneath to move.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    It's quite noticeable (to me at least) that the areas with highest wear are usually places that have heavy vehicles (buses and lorries) braking and accelerating. Traffic lights and bus stops will often have bumps/dips that seem to demonstrate a shearing force between the road surface layers.
    - _benedict 2y ago
      I have always assumed it was just due to the uneven distribution of weight by vehicles often being stationary in the same spot, so those points are subject to more compression forces than the surrounding road surface. If it were acceleration and deceleration I’d have expected the effect to be less localised, as breaking and accelerating happens over a much longer distance. But, I have no actual idea. It’s just probably not friction…
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I'm surprised there isn't more info available to compare vehicles/tyre wear. There's plenty of real-world driving going on, so you'd think someone would have measured tyre replacement frequencies.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Tires and driving styles vary a lot, so it would be really hard to come up with some aggregate numbers. Maybe you could compare the same very popular tire on different cars that still have enough data points to average out differing factors?
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    I reckon that the different driving styles could be partially dealt with by considering different classes of car. E G. Fast "prestige" cars will tend to share certain driving styles and be quite different to cheaper run-arounds. Ideally, it'd be great if insurance companies made a big push to get some kind of standardised "black box" that drivers could fit. As well as providing extra stats, I think they'd be great for detecting illnesses. A simple driving ability stat could be produced from the typical acceleration/braking timings - smoother is better as it shows good anticipation by the driver. If their stat starts decreasing more than expected due to aging etc. then the driver could be alerted that they should consult a doctor as it could cognitive decline, eye problems etc.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

I don't think it's fake as there's plenty of reports that EVs do go through tyres quicker. A quick search brings up many articles on the phenomenon e.g. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-with-evs-they-tire-quickly https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-with-evs-t...

jeffbee 2y ago
There's nothing categorical about EVs that make them eat tires. The aggregate data about average EV tire life is skewed by the relative popularity of and poor choices made by Tesla.
- croes 2y ago
  But we agree that heavier cars have more tire wear. And EV cars tend to be heavier then comparable combustion cars.
  - thebruce87m 2y ago
    > According to a 2022 study from the Environmental Protection Agency, the average weight of a car is 4,094 pounds. https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/ https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/ Model 3 Curb Weight: 3,552–4,048 lb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3
    - croes 2y ago
      Model S 4,323 – 4,960 lbs Model X 5,248 lbs Model Y 4,209 - 4,363 lbs So what’s your point? That EV cars exist that are less heavy than the average car? That’s not why I said, I said comparable combustion cars are less heavy than their EV counterpart.
      - thebruce87m 2y ago
        If that’s your point why didn’t you provide any comparisons to equivalent ice models? Let’s look at some comparisons since that is your point: > Starting with the Tesla Model 3 weighing in at between 1777Kg and 1840Kg > A comparable ICE car the BMW 3 series 1570Kg - 1965Kg > And another ICE car the Mercedes C class 1665Kg - 2190Kg > And finally another EV the Ford Mustang Mach-E 1993Kg - 2218Kg https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-perception-of-Tesla-cars-being-heavy-compared-to-other-cars-Is-there-a-significant-difference-in-weight-between-Tesla-models-and-other-cars https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-perception-of-Tesla-cars-b... So there’s not much in it. EVs do tend to be 10-15% heavier for the same model in EV vs ICE but the point is brought up constantly as if they are twice as heavy, or at least significantly heavier. In reality picking a model 3 would for your next car would bring the average weight of US new cars down which I think is interesting, no?

vehemenz 2y ago

Heavier vehicles wear down tires faster. Visceral intuitions can't really compete with physics here.

ajmurmann 2y ago
When more so if they have more torque.

what-the-grump 2y ago

I mean... yes/no? EVs are on AS slicks, the tyre itself has less tread on it than something like CrossClimate 2. Overall they are replaced quicker and eat tread quicker. Its ~50% difference. I have both ICE and EV. The new tyres that are coming out like Pirelli P Zero, promise a longer life span, but that remains to be seen.

hansvm 2y ago

Maybe, but the average Tesla tire lasts half as long as my tires typically do, and the extra weight from the battery combined with the high onset torque are likely culprits (the former of which you can't fix with current battery technology when comparing otherwise apples-to-apples ICEs vs EVs if the EVs have non-negligible range, and the latter of which would require artificial limiting on the electric motor (which companies don't want to do because it's a selling point)). For some rough numbers under normal/factory configurations to consider: - A semi truck converts around 0.9 milliliters of tire to dust per kilometer. - A Tesla Model Y clocks in at 0.3 ml/km - A Honda Fit clocks in at 0.1 ml/km Even with an overestimate of semis being responsible for 10% of total miles driven in the US, if everyone drove a Model Y then passenger cars would be responsible for 3x more tire dust than semis, and if everyone drove a Honda Fit then you'd be down to 1x. Are there bigger concerns out there? Probably. Is the solution to bias toward ICE instead of EV? Probably not. It's not worth burying our heads in the sand when making those decisions though.

YZF 2y ago
What specific tires do you have on those vehicles? Performance motorcycle tires wear much faster than non-performance (or your average car tire). Sportier car tires generally have softer compounds that wear faster. How you drive your vehicle also has an impact. Tire pressure.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The weight difference between a Model 3 and the average new car sold in the US is a negative number. The Model 3 is slightly lighter than the average new car. So the difference comes entirely from torque. But you could just... not have such a heavy foot.
- hansvm 2y ago
  The difference also comes from the grippier tires on the Model 3, the total tread volume on those tires compared to a smaller car, and that the Model 3 compared to the average car isn't apples to apples if you're looking at tire wear for ICE vs EV (to be fair, my car's too light to be apples to apples either, but if you look at comparably sized cars the Model 3 is heavier).