Electric Car Tires? Talking about EV tires with Michelin!
We’ve owned our Mustang Mache for close to three years. We’re getting to the point to where we’re going to start to look at new tires for it. I know a lot of you have the same question of like, what should I replace my Mustang Mache tires with or any EV? There’s a lot of specific questions about that. And one of the things I want to point out, these are Michelin Cross Climate Twos. Uh, I got very interested in these after seeing them on the Mustang Maki Rally. They’re a fantastic tire. We got to test it out last year when we uh got to drive the Mustang Maki Rally for the first time. Does great in rough conditions, but also is really nice on the freeways. Very little tire noise. So, what I did is I reached out to Michelin so that we could talk and discuss about Michelin tires specifically, but also swapping out your EV tires and and just talking about in general tires. So, we’re going to go and talk to Michelin right now. Well, we’d like to welcome Russell from Michelin. Uh, we invited Russell on today because we have a lot of questions about EV tires specifically. And who better to go to than one of the best brands out there, Michelin. Um, as we were setting this up, I I was telling Michelin that my dad swore by Michelin. uh he always always always had to have Michelin tires and uh it started way back when before I was born but he was always like we get more miles out of Michelin so it’s it’s just worth it at the end. So uh not like I have you know super brand loyalty unfortunately the the tires on my car are not Michelin because they didn’t come with that but we’ll get into that. Not yet. Not yet. So so uh thank you for joining us Russell. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having us. But, uh, it’s a great topic. I love talking about it. So, uh, look forward to the discussion. Yeah, it’s it’s sort of an interesting thing because like, you know, people will look at the suspension, they look at all of the, you know, the stuff that goes into their EV specifically. Um, and a lot of times it’s sort of like, you know, they they go get the replacement tires and they’re just like, what’s what’s on sale? What’s the the the cheapest? But there should be a lot that goes into this. and specifically like we’re seeing a lot of um brands and and Michelin has a a a line of like tires that are sort of EV focused. So, can you help explain like what makes a an EV tire different than a normal tire? So, I usually start by talking about what makes an EV different from the perspective of a tire if if you let me do that. Um so, there are a few things. One is you uh electric vehicles are much more efficient. If you take internal combustion engine, a lot of the energy that comes from the gasoline in that combustion process is lost in heat. And then there all these moving parts from the engine, the transmission to get it to the wheels. With an electric vehicle, it’s pretty much battery energy transferred, little bit of loss to the wheels. Okay. So what happens then is that the energy losses from things like tires become more prevalent. Uh because as everything else goes away, the other things that change your your your energy consumption, what we kind of call range in an EV become more important. And so in the case of electric vehicles and tires, tires can make a a difference in range. We did a test where we tested several different tires across the indust industry, Michelin and a few others, and we saw depending on which tire you picked, you could maybe change your range by 15%. Yep. Does that matter to you? It depends on who you are, your commute, that sort of thing. But they matter. So that that’s one thing. Um the other is to take the engine out, the transmission, and all that, and you’ve got a quieter ride. So the tires aren’t louder, but they can be more noticeable in some vehicles versus others. So that’s one thing. So there’s the energy consumption, rolling resistance, there’s a noise, and then electric vehicles tend to be heavier and because they’re heavier, um, all things equal, tires will wear faster. And so those are the kind of the three things that that make a difference. Now Michelin’s perspective on that is these are three things areas where we we uh we excel. I’m an engineer uh most of my career uh done tire design and these are the areas that we we have fun with as engineers. So, our our perspective is to put the improvements that EV consumers appreciate in all our tires because even if you have an internal combustion engine and your tire is quieter, you’re not going to object to that, right? So, right. So, that’s pretty much what we’re doing is we understand what it takes to make a good EV tire and we’re putting those characteristics into all of our products. So, now I want to get into the the tire wear specifically because I’ve seen somebody like somebody tried to say that like EV tires wear five times faster and it’s like yes, they wear faster, but it’s not a five times faster wear out for an EV tire. So, let’s I’ll go a little bit into the science of it. Oh, perfect. um quiet as is kept, what supports your vehicle is not the tire, it’s the air in the tire. It is the air in the tire. So for a heavier load, you have two choices. You can uh either put a larger tire on if you got a suddenly a heavier vehicle, larger tire on um and or you can put more air in the tire. That’s called air pressure. Um, if you put more air in the tire air pressure, your your air pressure goes up. There’s some EVs that are up around 42 to 45 pounds per square inch PSI. Um, as opposed to the standard what what used to be 35 PSI. So, it’s a bit more. What happens there is that in that con in that case the the the stress where the tire meets the road is very basic order equal to the pressure in the tire. So you have a heavier load, you put more air in the tire, the tire pressure goes up, you put more stress on the road and it wears faster. Okay, there’s a lot more science in it than that, but that’s still order zero true, right? um or you just put a larger tire on and not only do you have a lower air pressure, you’re back to your normal air pressure, but you actually have more rubber because the diameter is larger. So, in the cases where EV manufacturers choose to put pretty much the same size tire as they would an internal combustion engine, the tires wear faster, but not four times faster. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Now, now the other thing is is like, uh, we we have a Mustang Maki, we have the GT Performance Edition. So, um, of course with the Maky, there’s a there’s a variety of models. So, there’s like the Select, there’s the GT, GT Performance Edition, which they’ve sort of merged down, but also the Rally. Um, there’s a lot of different, you know, thought processes that go into like which tire is the best for which car. But even with the Mache, there’s like different use cases. Um, and one of the reason another reason I wanted to reach out to Michelin was like we just tested a Mustang Maki Rally and it has the Crossclimate twos on that car and I was super impressed because I saw the beefy tire on it like as a you know they were selling selling it as a like this can do all these things off-road but we drove it around Denver for three or four days. The the ride quality was just fantastic on the road. And this was like key for me was like it was quiet because a lot of times you go on those beefier tires and it gets very noisy when you’re driving, you know, 75 miles an hour on the freeway. So, uh, couple of things there. Like first of all, let’s talk about the cross climate too. And then also like if we can, we’ll save this for a little bit, but like how would like you know, we have mostly Mustang Mache owners that are looking at replacing their tires. Like how would they pick the right tire for their use case? you know, Colorado versus California Select versus GT. So, lots in there, but let’s start with that Cross Climate, too, because I think that’s just a fantastic tire. And it looks cool, too. So, I have four vehicles and two of them have Cross Climate, twos. Um, turning my head that way, but that’s the Michelin parking lot. It’s a not so secret secret, probably most popular tire in that parking lots that Cross Climate, too. It’s a It’s a very popular tire. And I also know from studies that um EV consumers across platforms really appreciate that tire. It’s it’s designed to to give this great performance in just about any type of weather. It’s it’s a perfect tire for the US. Um I I I’m in South Carolina. I don’t get a lot of snow. Yeah. But I still love the tire because of it performance and wet. It’s got a 60,000 mi warranty and it pretty much does 60,000 mi even on EVs. There’s always an exception, but we stand by that by that warranty anyway. And we design our tires where you don’t need it. Um, and then if you’re in places like Denver where you get snow, it’s three peak mountain snowflake, which means it’s it’s certified. It’s passed the criteria to give you good traction in a mild to moderate snow, right? You don’t in most cases need a snow tire. So, it’s just this all-weather tire. It’s it’s came from about five years of research at least. I mean, deep concept research, really understanding the fundamentals of tire mechanics, and that’s the product that we came up with. And um it’s a fantastic tire, and it handles well. And one of the things that we’re very conscious of is noise. And we do things where we have, if you look at that tire, they’re actually three different tread block sizes. Mhm. And that’s on purpose because if you if you don’t do that, well, we have a computer program that takes us three different tread block sizes and optimizes them for noise. And what that does, if you imagine you have piano and you play the same note all the time, you get this annoying noise. Yeah. But if I give you three different keys, three different notes, it’s not as annoying. It smooths the sound out. And if it’s actual piano, it’s pleasant. In the case of the Cross Climate, too, it’s just less noticeable. I won’t go that far as to say it’s making music. Yeah, it’s not pleasant, but it’s it Yeah, it it was really uh shockingly quiet. And um on a on a related note, cuz like we uh the tires on our Maki GT Performance Edition, um I they were relatively quiet when we first got the car. We’re about three years into these tires now. Um they’re getting noisier as they get older. And and if you want to talk about that at all, it’s like how do you control um the the wear and tear so that number one, you know, cuz like we all, you know, we we’re all not just replacing our tires at 50% thread. Um and we’re keeping them. Some people wait too long, but like how do you control like performance and handling and making sure it’s still good as people get to the end of life as well as stay quiet? Is that is there also some, you know, magic in the chemistry of the rubber as well? So let’s talk about there are three things. Let’s talk about um overall performance at end of life and and then I’ll focus in on noise as the tire evolves. And um what I can tell you is on my sleeve, Michelin’s been making tires for over 100 years. Um, I went to graduated from grad school, got a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, went to tire design school, and it was like I was back in grad school again at Michelin. And I tell you that to tell you, we know from years and years and years, decades of experience, what you can and can’t do to induce noise at the end of life, right? We know how tire tread blocks evolve as they wear. Um, and we know what we need to do and it’s a secret sauce. I can’t tell you. The one thing I will tell you that um is make sure you rotate your tires every 6 to 8,000 miles. That does help. That’s important. But there’s still some other things that we know as tire design rules um that we incorporate to make sure that you don’t get this things that make the tire noisier as the tire wears. And and I think that’s something uh I know you know this, but I want to emphasize it to our our viewers because um you know there’s always this mantra that EVs need less maintenance, but one of the things that is a constant is no matter what car you have, rotating your tires is key for the life of the tires. Yes, definitely. Every 6 to8,000 miles. and then check them periodically at least once a month or on a road trip to make sure that that there’s no damage that you can’t see when you’re just walking out to your car. And also the good thing about rotating maybe 68,000 miles if you’re doing it with a tire service professional, they’re going to do a good job of inspecting it as well. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because it I mean especially I like I used to d you know make sure I did that before a road trip because it’s like you don’t want to get out there and then all of a sudden you see a tire going low or whatever. So that yeah, that’s huge. And then uh another thing for our viewers, not necessarily for you, is uh one of the best things I bought for our Maki is like I have a portable battery power tire inflator cuz I had the one that plugged into the cigarette lighter and it was always a pain and it’s like you’re, you know, the cables going everywhere. Um, but I have a separate tire gauge just because like I I trust those a little bit more and I have that tire inflator and I keep those in the frunk of the car and before like we went to Long Beach the other day for an Electrify uh EVF fest and before I left I’m like h this one’s down two, this one’s down one and it’s like before I would have just ignored that but now that I can it’s like it’s just super easy. So again, something else for our viewers, get you a portable tire inflator. It’s so cool. Yeah, I I do that personally. Um, and I have I have kids that are young adults and I gifted them one as well. Um, I’m going to go back to one question. You talked about performance at end of life. Oh, yeah. And we talked about noise, but one of the things we do is we actually buff the tires down close to the end of life and we test them in wet and dry conditions. So we we uh we design we have design rules for performance end of life but we go one step further and we actually test tires simulating end of life and make sure that the tires still have fantastic performance both new and end of life. Well I love that because that’s uh like I said we all just don’t go around with new tires on our car. Yeah. And it’s it is great to hear that that you guys are testing that not just sort of in theory thinking like yeah it’ll work. So I appreciate that. Um, now you know again I was sort of wanting to make this segment so that we can help our viewers as they you know the Maky you know we have 2021 Machis uh a lot of people have already replaced their tires but people as they are you know like us getting close to when it’s time to replace tires and they’re looking um first of all reputable brand so that’s why we have you guys on but what what are other things that people can can look for and uh you know like for us like one of the things with our uh GT performance edition is like we have summer tires which it’s actually okay here in Colorado uh California but when we were living in Colorado like we we it was like we had to be very careful and take our other car when it was certain temperatures and a lot of people ignore some of those things and they they don’t understand necessarily they’re like well I have all seasonason tire I’m good for the snow. So there’s a lot that goes into that. if you have any general advice on, you know, like if you have a Maki Select or Premium or Rally or like how how do they go about finding the best tire for what they need? So, um this is one of the things I enjoy about in my job is the question about what is the question you’re asking is what’s the best tire for your vehicle? I kind of turn that around. What’s the best tire for you? And what I mean by that is how do you use your vehicle? what gives you enjoyment when you use your vehicle. Um, if if you’re using that that Mache and you’re having fun, spirit to driving, then you know, summer tires like the Pilot Sport 4S, yes, in places where you you have uh you have relatively uh mild winters, you have mild winters, those are great, right? That’s going to change your performance if that’s what you’re looking for, a more sportier feel. Okay. Um, if you’re looking for a balance, like you’re in Colorado and you want snow, you have a couple different choices. You have, if you still want this sporty feel, but you’ve got snow, we have the Michelin Pilot Sport All Season 4, right? And that’s a that’s a high performance tire line that you will find even OE on a few uh high performance supercars that’s designed just for that. And that’s a very popular tire, I’ll tell you, with Michelin employees. If you like sporty driving, we’ll put that on as well for all weather. Um, if you’re not as interested in that sporty driving, then that CrossCl Climate 2 is great because it’s going to give you 60,000 miles. And what I find is EV consumers that are disappointed in the wear life of their vehicles go to Cross Climate 2 and then they buy them again when they’re around 6,000 mi because it really does have that balance that you’re seeing. But a lot of it has to do with your driving style. And that’s that’s why we try we put in our tires the learnings from EVs in all of them. One of the things we’re doing is we’re making all of the tire lines as they come out, they wear longer and longer so that whether you’re an EV driver or not, we still have the same warranty. We don’t we don’t change the warranty. Um, and if you’re not EV driver and you get more than the warranty, you’re still happy, right? But we want to give everybody that same minimum promise. And then it’s about who you are and how you drive. And we have a product for you. If you love your tire, your vehicle with Michelin OE tires, just put them back on. Yeah, that’s good, too. Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh we have that GT, so I’ve been I’ve been uh you know, looking at the Michelin line, but it’s like I knew that the Rally had those crossclimate twos. I don’t know if that’s right for us because I do like the summer performance that we get out of, you know, having summer tires on it. But, uh yeah, there there’s a lot of great options out there. And I think that’s really great advice. It’s like think about how you’re going to use it. And uh you know, we we all don’t have to take it to a track to get the benefits of a performance tire. And we also don’t have to just live off the off-road to be like, “Okay, now I need to cross climb it, too.” is it’s like and here’s what I would here’s what I’ll tell you too is that um if you buy a Michelin tire and you know let’s say you you buy the Pilot Sport Allseason 4 and maybe you wish you’d brought the Cross Climate 2 instead we have what’s called Michelin promise plan and you can use that I think it’s 60 days you got 60 days if you decide I wish I’d bought another product Michelin promise plan and it’s because you bought Michelin tires We’ll make you whole, right? We’ll make that work for you. So, it it’s a satisfaction guarantee because what we want to do is year, year after year, mile after mile, we want you to be happy with that set of tires. And we don’t want you to spend the next few years on this tire wishing you gotten another Michelin product. So, yeah. Yeah. And then it goes back. You’ll get somebody like my dad that’s like, I won’t put anything about Michelin’s and you that makes you guys happy and he’s happy because he has a product he likes. So whatever it is, find the tire that suits you and and just go for it. And it to me I think it’s always interesting because like I you know there’s been times, you know, especially when I was younger, I was like whatever’s the cheapest tire I can get because that’s, you know, that’s the way budgets go. Um, but really I I do think about it as like it’s such an investment and like I you can really tell and something that you’re going to have in your car for 50,000 miles. And if you’re going to spend $50,000 on a car, why save like $200 on a tire that doesn’t make you happy? And what we we try to do is make sure that when you when you buy a Michelin product, u one, you get a good deal of wear out of it, but you get enjoyment out of it out of that product and it it maintains your your vehicle if you got an OE or enhances it in a way that’s particular to you so that you get that the joy of driving is what we call it. Um, and that’s the reason, one of the reasons we want you to come back and buy another Michelin tire is because you you enjoyed it. So, I think one of the final things that we can get into is like it sounds like the tire can be a very personal choice. We don’t have like you don’t have like a like you have a a Maki premium, buy this tire. So, how would somebody go about making that decision? Is there like a Michelin rep that they can or just their local tire dealer? cuz I I always feel like if I go to the tire dealer that has, you know, 10 brands, they’re going to they’re going to pick which one they have like in stock cuz I’ve had that before where it’s just like I knew what tire I wanted and they try to talk me into a different tire because they didn’t want to have to like order it and fear I would just go down the street. So, how do they find somebody that’s a product expert that can help them pick that tire and make the right choice? So, what I recommend is you go to michelamman.com. And the reason why is because that’s we have reps that are trained to do that, right? And they can walk you through and help you understand the different products. There are some tire dealers, and I don’t want to I’m not going to endorse one or the other, but there are some tire dealers that do a really good job of characterizing tires based off of performance or based off consumer reviews. Um, so there there’s some really good ones out there that to give you some great advice, but uh maybe the simplest one is michelman.com and we’ll guide you through that. Perfect. Sounds great. I I I will finish with one final thing because I like I wanted to emphasize this because I didn’t realize how bad it was until the first time it happened to me. And I know we’ll have some viewers out there that probably the same thing happens, but this was years ago. I bought a Subaru WRX. I don’t even remember which brand tire it had on it, but it was in February and I bought it and it had summer tires on it and literally like the next day we had a big snowstorm and I was like, “Ah, it’s fine. It’ll it’ll manage. It’s Subaru. It’s all-wheel drive.” Um, which first of all still didn’t help me into traction and and accelerating. And it was a deaf trap trying to drive in summer tires at like 12 degrees temperature. Um, so a lot of tires are pretty flexible, but something that I think I, you know, maybe you can help me emphasize to to to viewers is that if you have a summer tire on your performance car and it’s 12 degrees outside, that’s extremely dangerous. Yeah. So, there are two things there. There’s all-wheel drive and then there’s summer tire. And I’m going to quickly address both of those. All-wheel drive can help you go, but it’s the tires in your car that make you stop. Yes. Overdrive does not help you stop. It helps you go faster, but if you can’t stop, that’s worse. Yeah. Um, and I’ve had personal experiences where guy had all-wheel drive and he passed me, took off faster at a light and we went to stop and he slid through the intersection through. But um, so let’s talk about summer tires and winter tires in general. Uh, and it gets into, among other things, rubber compound. uh rubber has what’s called a glass transition temperature and what that is that is a temperature in which kind of the properties that we depend upon for rubber and tires go away um and it becomes it it acts differently for summer tires um we recommend that you you dismount your tires don’t use summer tires in temperatures above I mean below around 40° um an exact number, but and that’s because that’s not the same rubber, right? You’re you’re break your ability to b break and and keep traction goes away. On the other hand, if you take a full winter tire, um then they’re optimized for much colder temperatures like 0 degrees minus 10 um and they give you great braking in colder temperatures, but not so great in in hot. So, it’s just about picking the spot, the operating optimal operating conditions for the rubber compound in the tires. That’s one. Two, summer tires have large blocks so that they hold up well when you’re cornering. Uh they don’t cut into the snow. They don’t dig into the snow. So, you’ve got that on as well. So, there a couple things. One is the rubber compound just simply it’s not designed to operate in those conditions. and we pick where that glass transition temperature is depending on depending on it and there’s some trade-offs other trade-offs and the other is the tread design is different when you know you have you need snow traction so perfect yeah it was it was shocking like the the difference and people were asking me like am I getting rid of my summer tires on my Mache because we lived in Colorado no we just moved to California that was just that was the better solution for us but not everybody could do that and that was uh we were very fortunate to be able to do that. And it we actually had to time it because uh we were trying to move. It was November 2022 and going to Utah it was going to be 18 degrees but we went south through Albuquerque and it was like 40 degrees. So we we we kept ourselves safe but but yeah. So anyways that a lot of great info um today. So thank you so much for uh you know sharing all of this with our viewers. Uh I I know that’s like one of the biggest questions that we get uh on a regular basis or a periodic basis is like what tire should I go and replace my tires with? And people again like they assume a lot of things about EV tires. I think we dispel some of those today. So very much appreciate your time. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks a lot. So that was great to get a little insight from Michelin. I know not everybody is going to want to pick Michelin. There’s a lot of uh great brands out there, but uh I was really happy to talk to Michelin based off of, you know, my dad always being a Michelin guy. Uh behind us, by the way, you might notice there is the super Mustang Mach E as well as the Mustang Maki NASCAR prototype. And by the way, that’s Roma Deamas. He’s getting ready to drive that up Pikes Peak. Oh my gosh, we got to go. Uh we’re going to say goodbye on this video, but we’re out here at uh Pikes Peak International Raceway to cover the Super Mustang Maki. Uh very cool to see all of the stuff that’s happening around this. Watch our other videos, but if you have questions about tires, drop those below. We’ll try to reach out to some other manufacturers as well. If you have any questions for Michelin, let me know. We’ll try to get those over to them as well. Thank you to our Patreon members. Uh names are scrolling across the bottom. I got really excited, so I got to rush. Uh, thank you to our YouTube subscribers as well as YouTube members. If you want to join any of those, details are down below in the description. Um, if you have any questions, drop them in the comments. We’re going to rush now. And just remember, whatever you drive, whether it’s a rally, whether it’s a Michelins, whether it’s a Super Mustang Mache, enjoy the ride. Bye.
There is a lot of talk in electric car communities about EV tires. While tire choices are important on all cars, EV owners have even more to consider. Differences in efficiency and road noise can have bigger impacts on electric cars, trucks, and SUVs.
We recently had a discussion with a tire expert from Michelin to get some of our questions answered when it comes to replacing the tires on our Mustang Mach-E.
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