Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!
Earlier this year, we replaced our OEM tires with Hankook iON evo SUV tires. Efficiency and longevity were two big analysis points in my research. I can’t speak to longevity yet (though I’m tracking tread depth with every tire rotation), but I can give an update on efficiency.
First of all, I’ll say that it’s quite difficult to get objective research about efficiency. So many of the random posts online do a very poor job of analyzing the data. For example, they’ll make a post of their efficiency after 100 miles or they’ll show a month of snowy winter driving compared to the previous 2 years of all-season driving. To avoid some of these issues, I’ve waited until we had 10,000 miles on the new tires before making this post.
- Over 40,000 miles with the original tires (Continental ProContact RX), we averaged 262 Wh/mi.
- Over 10,000 with the new tires, we’ve averaged 259 Wh/mi!
The tires area already performing slightly better than the OEM tires and that’s even when they’re relatively new. Over time, traction decreases but efficiency increases due to less rolling resistance.
A lot of the recommended tires for this car are high performance which makes sense because the cars can be driven hard. However, we are more interested in overall efficiency and those high performance tires can easily use 10% more energy. This makes a big difference over time, or even on specific trips where you’re pushing the limits of your range.
Shortly after we purchased these tires, Tire Rack came out with an in-depth review of EV tires and they agreed that the Hankooks were much more efficient than other tires while still having good performance: Tire Test Results : Are EV-Specific Tires Better than Popular Non-Ev Tires? – 2024 Test 1 (tirerack.com)
We’ll see how long these tires last, but assuming they hold up ok, I’d happily buy them again.