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 for tires, manufacturers will try to make this eminently clear in the marketing - you pay a premium for tires that maximize on one or two of these features.
The changes that California is proposing basically means you are going to have to choose between traction and tire wear when shopping. Either super slippery tires, or tires that wear out quickly (hence why manufacturers are potentially behind the proposal).
> The rule also comes with exemptions including snow tires and those used in competition. All-weather tires are also excluded, but the state will track them, as that growing segment may be regulated in the future.
All-Weathers are excluded! Realistically this is a program that would only be effective in California.
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.
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.
You just need social stigma on bad tires. It's the single most important thing on your vehicle, for literally all the reasons out there.
Right after we have a social stigma for people that keep voting to have the government involved in every bit of their lives.
How about when the market fails customers, still no government involvement? Food and drugs regulation, environment stuff (you are here) and so on?
The US military-industrial complex is the single largest institutional hydrocarbon consumer and greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. It would be pretty stupid for me to listen to the government's advice about how best we should preserve the environment.
China has been the largest ghg emitter for the last 20 years, and currently emits more than twice as much as the us. Gdp spent on defense is similar as a fraction of gdp (slightly more in the us). So realistically the Chinese military is by far a larger emitter of ghg than the us military.
We can’t successfully shame each other to avoid Hot Pockets and big brands of cereal that acutely poison our kids.
You think people are going to tread-peek?!
I agree with you, but we’re both going to be disappointed.
I've tried social stigma on lack-of-using-turn-signals, and have been about as disappointed as you are likely to be hah.
> The Michelin CrossClimate2 tires are arguably the best traction tires,
In their class, but not in general.
They are all-season tires. They don't perform as well as winter tires in the winter, and they don't perform as well as summer tires in the summer.
They're also a terribly mushy tire. They feel like you're floating around on the road and wallowing through the turns. This doesn't matter in the slightest to someone commuting to work in their 15 year old Honda Accord with blown struts, but if you enjoy driving they're on the list of tires to avoid.
Everything is a tradeoff. Some tires do a better job of optimizing within their class, but the Michelin CC2 is assuredly not the best traction tires in general.
>They don't perform as well as winter tires in the winter, and
A lot of people don't live in climates where winter tires are even sold; particularly California, Texas, Florida, three of the most populous states. Many people in those states aren't even aware "winter tires" are even a product category. That's like complaining the Walmart in Anchorage, Alaska doesn't carry SPF 50 sunscreen.
Just as a geographic note: You can buy winter tires in California. The Sierra Nevada (snowy mountains) run down a sizable chunk of the state. California has even hosted the winter olympics.
You left the "and" but left out the critical part of my quote: They're not as good as summer-only tires in the summer.
> A lot of people don't live in climates where winter tires are even sold
The CrossClimate 2 tire we're talking about is an all-weather tire with the 3-peak snow designator. If you're trying to call me out for talking about winter tires in comparison to a tire designed for winter weather, I think you don't understand what we're talking about.
> Many people in those states aren't even aware "winter tires" are even a product category
Again, the CrossClimate 2 is a tire with a winter designation. California also has a lot of snowy locations.
> That's like complaining the Walmart in Anchorage, Alaska doesn't carry SPF 50 sunscreen.
Not only do stores in Anchorage carry SPF 50, but you're going to need it in the summer. When the sun is out for 20 hours a day, it adds up.
You're gonna want SPF 50 in Alaska too.
And Walmart has it in stock in Anchorage. So a moot point.
And also a dedicated set of tires for the winter, that have studs in them.
I’ve not noticed a mushy feeling on my wife’s Mazda CX-9 with CC2s, but tbf it’s an SUV. One of the sportier SUVs around, but still.
For reference, I used to daily a Honda S2000 (not with CC2s, obviously).
> I’ve not noticed a mushy feeling on my wife’s Mazda CX-9 with CC2s, but tbf it’s an SUV. One of the sportier SUVs around, but still.
They are not great in that regard. Casual drivers won't usually care, but anyone who pays attention to handling usually hates them.
>Yes, there are trade-offs, but you can get really great tires on all three.
there is another metric at play with Michelin, they're consistently one of the most expensive options in every segment.
> ... 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.
That is incredible. My front ones are toast after only 15 000 miles / 25 000 km ( Continental Sport Contact 3 / N0 rating) and two years. 95 000 miles and I'd need to change them not because of wear but because they'd be legally too old.
At some point I'll buy a reasonable car.
If you put Cross Climate 2s on whatever German car your Sport Contact 3s came on you'd instantly regret it just because of how it drives.
Indeed, I put a full set of CrossClimate2 on my German car and the two back tires were completely toast within 24 months and ~15k Km (on Canada). After that I decided to start using proper summer and winter tires.
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.
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. (
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.
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.
It's hard to imagine median driver performance is SoCal being any worse in heavy rain than it already is.
I'm not sure the tires matter all that much if you don't alter your driving at all.
Tire manufacturers tend to have different compounds for Europe (focused on lower rolling resistance) and North America (focused on traction and a wider range of working temperatures). I'd guess that California will now simply get the EU variants instead of the NA variants.
From what I remember European tired were often outperforming American tires in stopping performance and other metrics. So not sure that's true.
> 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)
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!
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.
Which really is just a revenue game but one with a good eough pretext you can sell it to average dumbass voter. All the "serious" overloading is non-CDL box trucks anyway and has been forever. The road scales are easily gamed, or just avoided.
> The road scales are easily gamed, or just avoided.
How are they easily gamed, without being able to shift the load as you roll over the scale?
And, at least in California, the scales are placed so that, to avoid them, you have to add a bunch of time to most routes.
You shift your route. Not the load
> The road scales are easily gamed, or just avoided.
Yes, they stated that in the second half, and I addressed it. What's the first half?
Most scales don't even log/alert/flag weights below the maximum legal axle weight or axle group weight. So a 2-axle truck can weigh 40k and nobody will hear about it. In the event that they're fancy and integrated with an ALPR (assuming your plate is readable, lots of ways to game that on a box truck) the scales don't typically extend onto the paved shoulder. Even if they do you slow down and drop a tire off the pavement. And if all that fails, if you have air suspension you can dump the axle as the truck is going over the scale.
Ah thanks! So a design/operation flaw of the scales! I didn't realize they were run/monitored so incompetently, where concepts like "make sure the truck is actually on the scale" were ignored. But, I'm in no way surprised! That's governing bodies for ya!
Overloading is for trucks what speeding is for cars. They don't really "care" beyond revenue as long as you're not absurd about it. The rules were never written to be fully enforced.
Once you understand this the whole system makes sense.
We are part way there, gas stations are required to provide free air and a gauge to customers buying gas.
As a Scandinavian that sounds normal, and has been my entire life. In fact you don't need to buy gas to use the free air or water, it is just out in the open in a service cabinet or on the side of the building. (There is sometimes a sign that the water is only for cleaning your windows / mixing windshield fluid from concentrate, not for filling up RVs, and the flow is very slow.)
I'm curious, do they actually check that you buy gas in the US before letting you get those services?
Free air is very common these days. I don't think a purchase has ever been required for free air anywhere I've been. Occasionally you need to go in and get a free token since the air machine is still coin operated, but I've never been asked to prove a purchase.
The one near my house has a card reader :(
Doesn't TPMS take care of that? Though, it seems like it's being done in software now to save costs...
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.
Because that could not also be a citable offense?
We could also make cooking up hair brained schemes to regulate minutia a citable offense.
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.
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.
> 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.
I wonder if better rolling resistance + decent safe traction means more tire particulate pollution.
There are trade-offs, but there huge differences in quality between say a Michelin or Pirelli and a cheap Chinese brand.
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.
Hmm, I have these tires on my Model 3: 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.
Well, how do you drive? And in what climate?
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.
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!
Every time you enter regen, you're engaging the brakes as far as the tires are concerned.
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.
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?
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.
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)
>$185/tire for a Honda Civic, which is a pretty normal price
That's like double the price of random import stuff.
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.
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.
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."
Apparently many new cars come with tires with less than normal tread, one of the reasons is to have greater fuel economy.
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.