Tyre Life

[Alan Drover]

How many miles do you expect your tyres to last, 20/30,000 unless damaged beyond repair?
Well, I read an article where an electric VW thingy has a rear tyre life expectancy of 3,000, yes three thousand miles due to the weight of the batteries. The vehicle weighs in at about 1,800 kilos and VW acknowledge this saying there's nothing they can do about it. The owner isn't going to buy another leccy thingy.

[Wittsend]

If it's a Land Rover tyre life is more often measured in years.

With the deep tread of the style of LR tyres, wear isn't really a problem - it's side wall cracking & crazing due to age and exposure to (UV) light.

I've just replaced the front tyres on my eurobox after 30,000 miles and put the rears on the front (half worn) and the brand new tyres on the rear 


 

[Alan Drover]

Many years ago when I used my Land Rover a great deal more than I do nowadays I wore out a set of G90's but it took an extremely long time and considerably more than 3,000 miles.
I wonder what load and ply rating tyres are fitted to heavyweight leccy thingies. I would imagine a standard car tyre doesn't have the correct load rating.
The G90's are 10 ply and maximum load per tyre of 2,760 lb at 75 psi.

[ChrisJC]

A friend of mine bought a 2007 Defender Hi-Cap pickup, which came with G90's. He sold it 10 years and 80,000 miles later with the original tyres. Plenty of tread left too.

3000 miles from a set of tyres is pretty poor!

Chris.

[diffwhine]

Anybody who ever ran a Volvo T5 would know a story or two about abysmal tyre wear. I got 2000 miles out of one front set. At that attrition rate, the car had to go. Loved it though - high performance tank - that's all it was.

[NoBeardNoTopKnot]

Weight is a tyre killer. You don't see HGV tyre debris on our roads because weight goes easy on tyres.


I get roughly 15000 out of my T5 tyres,  I'm v.careful - it's a heavy car. Not tried it, no doubt heavy-footed too, I can see how 2000 would be easy, and 1500 miles quite possible.

With vastly higher weight than any Volvo T5, and massive torque it's reasonable that EVs owners should expect crazy tyre wear. Weight and power has to shred tyres.

On my 109, I've 7.50R16 Michelin XZL 7.50 x 16 dated 2020. 50-60% worn at 25,000ish miles, I shan't expect much over 40,000. And at current use, by then, they'll be 5-6 years old and be near scrap with reduced grip anyway.

[Adam1958]

I was pondering this today, I'm sure the real green credentials of EVs are a little iffy anyway, but shredding potentially 50kg of rubber/silica/carbon black every couple of months surely can't add newness to the environment. (I concede there's potentially less brake pad wear though.)
 

[Gareth]

My electric Up! Isn't exactly a heavyweight. It's done 14k and the rears are hardly worn, the fronts about 60% worn. They'll probably do another 3k. My L663 Defender has now done 25k and it needs 4 new shoes!

[nathanglasgow]

Had a Rover 75 estate for 14 years and 168,000 miles. Probably over 100,000 miles of that we're spent towing a double stack dinghy trailer. Never got more than 10,000 miles out of a front set but rears lasted 30,000+
The wee vx corsa 1.0 we had for 4 years was sold with 52,000miles on the rears with about 3mm left. I think the secret is to stay off the brakes and corner gently.

[AlexB]

I have read that the EVs are contributing greatly to the 2.5 micron particulates from tyre wear and brakes of course
Compensates for the lack of emissions perhaps ?

Lord giveth and taketh away...............

[Alan Drover]

Do they have engine braking?

[Craig T]

Do they have engine braking?

Lots of it.
Friend of mine has an EV and you can drive it on a setting with maximum engine braking and taking your foot off the pedal is like pressing the brakes in a petrol car. I think you can also drive it in one pedal mode where you only use the accelerator and if you take your foot off completely it will slow down and stop completely.

Craig.

[Old Hywel]

Regenerative braking. Uses the drive motor to recharge the battery, thus slowing forward motion.

[Hopeydaze]

We had a Tesla Y for about 6 months (company car) and you could literally do an entire journey without touching the brake pedal. As you slowed down you got a warning that the brake lights were on - this was from the engine braking not the brake pedal.
Back to the topic in hand.  I had a 2006 Defender 90 SW, put some General Grabber AT2s on at 9k miles and they were still going strong when it was stolen at 105k miles.

[Ken]

Driving up country today, a six hour run and I don't like the radio/ CD player as it has to be turned up enough to hear that it blows out my eardrums.
So driving in silence with time to think. Tyre wear of approx 3k miles. With average mileage at around 11k that's around 4 sets a year.
A big heavy car so expensive tyres, say £200 each to give an annual total of over £3k.
That amount buying diesel for use in a modern turbo diesel would give around 1 3/4 years driving at average miles.
Rough I know but near enough to make a point. Considered in the round just how green is an EV ?