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There are basically three major trade-off when it comes to tire compounds: rolling resistance, traction, and tire wear. You can pick 2 of the 3. When you shop

• AlexandrB 2mo ago
  Yeah, it's a weird move to legislate this kind of trade-off, especially when one of the competing factors is tire wear. Making new tires takes energy too! If I was paranoid, I'd say the tire lobby was involved here and looking for an excuse to sell more lower durability tires.
  • legitster 2mo ago
    This is 100% how legislation gets written when none of reps have experience and the only calls they take are from lobbyists. It's easy to imagine the manufacturer reps are playing games with the lawmakers. "Oh no, this is going to be really hard on us! It's going to cost us so much money! But I guess we can comply if we have to."
  • SoftTalker 2mo ago
    This was 100% pushed by a lobby. Name me one legislator who has any detailed knowledge about tires, rolling resistance, traction, tread wear, and fuel economy. I guess there might be single-digit numbers of them in a state as big as CA but even there I'd be surprised. And even if this was originated by an eco lobbiest group, tire manufactures would love regulation that forces everyone to buy more expensive tires.
  • jerlam 2mo ago
    Apparently many new cars come with tires with less than normal tread, one of the reasons is to have greater fuel economy.
• hnuser123456 2mo ago
  If they're looking to improve tire energy efficiency with regulation, shouldn't they also make it a citable offense to drive with tires inflated below 30psi? You could probably even train a ML algorithm to recognize images of vehicles with underinflated tires, and send the driver a reminder!
  • cucumber3732842 2mo ago
    Then people will drive around with them at 60psi (i.e. doable but not great for a car tire) and wonder why they keep breaking belts.
    • kazinator 2mo ago
      Because that could not also be a citable offense?
      • cucumber3732842 2mo ago
        We could also make cooking up hair brained schemes to regulate minutia a citable offense.
        • kazinator 2mo ago
          I would argue that someone driving around with 60 psi in tires that are supposed to be 33 is a smidgeon more than minutiae, since there is a real risk.
  • mikestorrent 2mo ago
    Doesn't TPMS take care of that? Though, it seems like it's being done in software now to save costs...
  • Spooky23 2mo ago
    That’s probably sooner than you think. DOTs are intercepting trucks with drones and measuring wheel temperatures and other metrics to do targeted enforcement rather than pulling over every truck. There’s also pilots of road sensors that can weigh trucks and perhaps other metrics.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• kuerbel 2mo ago
  Hmm, I have these tires on my Model 3: https://www.contimediacenter.com/eulabel/en/03143300000/ https://www.contimediacenter.com/eulabel/en/03143300000/ After 15,000 km, they haven't worn down by 2 mm. And that's despite being an EV. I think it really depends on how you drive.
  • mikestorrent 2mo ago
    Well, how do you drive? And in what climate?
    • kuerbel 2mo ago
      I live in Northern Germany so a temperate climate all in all, although nowadays it gets really hot during the summer. Well everyone says they are a good driver, and probably they are not. But I like to drive in a way that I rarely if ever have to engage the breaks. I also try to spread the regen distance if that makes sense, so it doesn't do a hard stop but slows down... gently over a longer distance. And when it comes to curves I try to follow the late apex line approach. I was also lucky with my car though, it came with an excellent wheel alignment which isn't always the case.
      • mikestorrent 2mo ago
        Regen braking is pretty amazing, I love it. I wish it was more configurable, though. I test drove the weird Mazda MX-30 and while it was too gutless and low-range to buy, one thing that impressed the hell out of me was the use of flappy-paddles behind the steering wheel to control regen strength. Felt like downshifting an automatic; you could set it to give you max regen without engaging the mechanical brakes, or total freewheeling. Made for some interesting hypermiling potential. Hopefully they ship a more complete EV one day!
      • anamax 2mo ago
        Every time you enter regen, you're engaging the brakes as far as the tires are concerned.
• mikestorrent 2mo ago
  Only Californians could dream up a stupid program like this and pretend that it's environmentally protective to send a ton more tire particles into the ecosystem, while costing consumers more, and probably increasing their carbon footprint at the manufacturing level, just to get shitty tires that might make a car a tiny bit more efficient. I had a set of these low-rolling-resistance tires stock on an early FWD EV I had a few years ago and they were not only trash in terms of getting grip whenever there was even a hint of rain, but they also had awful stopping distance. Swapping them out for a set of all-weathers vastly improved everything about the car. Consider the carbon footprint impact of a vehicle accident that totals both cars (never mind the human impact of this!). Probably cancels out hundreds of cars worth of carbon savings from using these shitty tires. Avoiding vehicle accidents has to be job one and tires are the single greatest factor in your stopping distance that you can simply buy an upgrade on. Combined with automatic braking technology - a great addition - you can seriously change the course of your life with a set that's only a couple hundred bucks more (in the sense that your life will be hella changed if you have an accident and end up with chronic pain). Every car has powerful enough brakes, braking upgrades are mostly just for racing needs; but stock tires are still very often just total garbage and the first thing you should replace.
  • ohlookman 2mo ago
    > probably increasing their carbon footprint at the manufacturing level This is auto consumers carbon footprint; not just you but you too. There is little value to physical reality segmenting rhetorically between "rich and poor" or "consumers and businesses". The carbon footprint is due to human activity full stop. Trying to live in rhetorical bubbles is trying to maintain social moats; stick to the script and you're off the hook! Politically correct weasel wordy terms you like to deploy are just evidence the propaganda worked on you; letting yourself off the hook for your existence as if Jesus paid for your sins A number of wannabe intelligent people who stick to the script and ignore the externalities of their own existence are disingenuous and self aggrandizing tools. So sick of social media tools wasting resources spreading their self absorbed rage bait about idiots in government; random idiots themselves with pseudonyms and no reason to believe they give a crap really (look at reality itself lately; why believe the shit people say?) Log off and let the open web joke die. Tech scene adjacent people are just turning into little more than religiously dogmatic old Boomers; can't move on.
• mdasen 2mo ago
  Yes, there are trade-offs, but you can get really great tires on all three. The Michelin CrossClimate2 tires are arguably the best traction tires, Consumer Reports estimates 95,000 miles of tread life in their testing (higher than basically anything else), and they got a 4/5 for rolling resistance on Consumer Reports' dynamometer testing. There's a lot of tires that are poorly made and just bad tires. For example, one tire got 2/5 for rolling resistance, tested to 55,000 miles for tread, and 2/5 and 3/5 ratings for the traction categories like wet braking, snow traction, ice braking. I'm not arguing that there aren't trade-offs, but tire companies have been working to make better tires that minimize the trade-offs and produce better tires on all three. > The rule is “designed to ensure that replacement tires sold in the state are at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold in the state as original equipment.” It sounds like the rule isn't exactly that strict. This (combined with the fact that all season tires aren't covered) presents a very low bar. But there are tires that are just garbage - they're bad at all three. It doesn't sound like this rule would impact good tires that have very long tread life and amazing traction. It sounds like it'd impact the tires that are a pile of garbage. There's a difference between a tire that trades off a small portion of rolling resistance for traction and tire wear and tires that are poorly made and are trading off a huge amount of one or two of those categories because they're just bad tires.
  • legitster 2mo ago
    It's worth pointing out the CrossClimate2 tires are all-seasons and exempt from the requirement. The 4/5 is specific to Consumer Reports all-season category - actual efficiency is going to be noticeably lower than the high efficiency tires they are talking about in the article. But you're not wrong in general. There are a lot of garbage tires. And that's not even considering the intentionally "bad" tires like the knobby off-road treads that also have the side effect of massively increasing road noise and reducing engine life. But like a lot of the California rules, they have carved out so many exceptions and have no real enforcement mechanism (the worst offending tires are being imported directly from China). So the reality is that there is not going to be a lot of juice for the squeeze.
    • Lwerewolf 2mo ago
• frevib 2mo ago
  There are trade-offs, but there huge differences in quality between say a Michelin or Pirelli and a cheap Chinese brand.
  • ninalanyon 2mo ago
    I have a Tesla S so that means bigger tyres than most European cars so I feel the price whenever I buy tyres so I once bought some Chinese summer tyres, Triangle brand, they were half the price of the equivalent Michelin. They seemed OK but they wore out twice as fast so it didn't save any money in the end. Now I just stick to Michelin Pilot Sport 4.
• reaperducer 2mo ago
  Either super slippery tires, or tires that wear out quickly Is it really not possible to get moderately-slippery tires that wear out moderately quickly, or is this just the hyperbolic writing style that infests the internet?
  • malfist 2mo ago
    You can, you just pay more for them. Take a look at the bicycle rolling resistance website. There are absolutely tires with great rolling resistance, excellent grip and pretty good wear characteristics. You just pay ~$100 a tire for them instead of the $30-$50 for OEM crap ones.
  • nerdsniper 2mo ago
    You can get very good tire performance with long life these days. They don't even cost that much. It's just most people buying tires don't learn about tires, they simply buy whatever the store sells them. There's a lot of bad tires out there with bad performance and weak lifespan. Michelin Defenders are warrantied for minimum 80,000 miles and are relatively low noise, good economy, good performance all around but especially good in rain. They cost $185/tire for a Honda Civic, which is a pretty normal price) (range for Honda Civic tires at Costco are $160-235, at TireRack $185/ea puts these about $25/tire over the median tire price for Honda Civic's)
    • cucumber3732842 2mo ago
      >$185/tire for a Honda Civic, which is a pretty normal price That's like double the price of random import stuff.
• m463 2mo ago
  I wonder if better rolling resistance + decent safe traction means more tire particulate pollution.
• Aurornis 2mo ago
  It's even worse than that. Rain performance and rolling resistance are conflicting goals. A good rain tire will need more voids to channel the water, but adding a lot of voids increases rolling resistance. California is a large market. Tire manufacturers probably won't make many California-specific tires. They're going to try to adjust their tires to meet the California guidelines. The most populous areas of California aren't known for demanding a lot of rain tires. So if you live somewhere with a lot of rain, your tire choices are about to get worse to appease regulations in a state you don't live in.
  • spockz 2mo ago
    This is what I always thought. But I have Pirelli Cinturato SF3 tires now. All season. Excellent stiffness and feel. Great handling in the wet. Virtually silent up to 80-90km/h and as efficient as the Michelin summer tires and more efficient than the continental winter tires I had. So apparently, design and compound can cater for a lot. Unfortunately, snow performance on my front drive car is worse than my XC90 has in AWD mode with summer tires. (
    • Aurornis 2mo ago
      Design and compound matters a lot, but it's still a tradeoff. The easiest way to increase rolling resistance is to reduce the tread depth. Less deformation of the rubber leads to less rolling resistance. So to improve rolling resistance, the designers can reduce tread depth and move to a harder compound, which trades off grip. Modern tires are good, but everything is tradeoffs.
      • spockz 2mo ago
        Of course it is trade-offs. But not all trade offs are linear on the same axis and conditions. For example, changing the compound to make it a bit harder may increase the longevity of the tire significantly in moderate climates at only a limited decrease in grip. And maybe even improved cornering.
  • lokar 2mo ago
• mc32 2mo ago
  Unless people never see any snow, I think all weather is the only choice to be made and the large tire makers all have decent offerings in the all weather category.
• nerdsniper 2mo ago
  > three major trade-off when it comes to tire compounds We are inventing better and better compounds though, which just plain better at all three. Formula 1 has to artificially nerf their tire compounds just to force racing teams to actually change tires at all - compounds are good enough that they can get all the grip they need while also lasting the entire race. But that's not as fun for the sport so they specific to the tire vendor that the tires must wear out halfway through the race -- but that reduced life doesn't yield increased grip. The Michelin Defender tires are pretty all-around great in all conditions while still lasting 80,000 miles. For most people who buy a new car, that would be the only set of tires they ever buy (stock tires for 20k miles or so and then this one set until 100k and sell the used vehicle before they need to buy a second set)
• deleted 2mo ago
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• spacephysics 2mo ago
  Ah yes, California the land of regulations. A compliance tax for the tire companies, less freedom of choice from consumers, and likely inferior products for a hefty subset of use cases. Tale as old as time.
• scotty79 2mo ago
  Tires that wear out quickly don't sound good for the economy or the environment. So that probably should be constrained too. So the companies can finally focus on delivering maximum grip for bounded wear and efficiency instead of juggling all three to the music played by marketing.
• butlike 2mo ago
  You should have grippy tires when traversing those mountains.