While the treads look good, after measuring the depth it was found that the FL tyre of the EV has 50% life, the FR has 60% and both the rear ones have just 30% of life left.
BHPian mobike008 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Alright guys, looks like I have to eat my own words. I spoke too quickly about EV tires lasting similar to ICE tires. I reckon, I am partly to be blamed as I never ever do any tire rotations and this practice has cost me heavily with my Tesla.
Just on a whim, I paid a visit to Discount Store to check if they would do a “FREE” rotation for my Tesla. First, they check the tires with a nice device which they put “behind” the tire to get the tread life.
While the treads look good from the outside, the results kind of shocked me as they came back with these numbers.
My car has now done 17,000 miles (27,000kms) in 18 months.
What it means is FL has 50% life, FR has 60% life, RR and RL has just 30% of life left.
Living in a land of rules does not help, Discount Tire does offer free rotations but, they refused to do it for tires at the current tread level-3/32th tread wear.
Here is an explanation of the tread wear. When the car comes out of the factory it’s at 10/32.
They recommend that I replace them with new tires at the earliest as the rolling resistance and stopping distance will decrease. I test them and see the car stop pretty good both with REGEN and with BRAKES for now.
Looks like my hard accelerations and Red Light Drag racing has cost me dearly. But, heck being an optimistic person, I turned this situation into a positive one. While I have come to terms that I need to replace them soon (Maybe in another 1k-2K miles) so until then, the car will remain in “SPORTS” mode and will now increase those heavy acceleration runs so I can run the tires to the ground.
When the time comes for replacement which is around the corner, I have shortlisted two tires.
One of them is EV-rated tires and very popular too and suggested by many on Tesla Forums.
What does EV-rated tires mean?
It means they typically have stronger sidewalls to help with the weight of the battery shifting when turning, putting more stress on the sidewalls. Also, many have foam on the inside to lessen road noise.
The other ones are slightly more expensive and are not EV-rated but, on their own, they are one of the highest-rated Performance All-Season Tires.
Have this dilemma to wade through in the next few weeks. Any input from learned members or EV owners would be appreciated.
Here’s what BHPian sagarpadaki had to say about the matter:
Perhaps, you could do a Cross(X) rotation of the tyres to bring the better ones to the front and run them till you change? From the numbers, it looks like the rear has worn faster than the front. So this X pattern rotation might give you more life from the remaining tread!
I am sure there will be other shops that will do the rotation for a fee!
Here’s what BHPian maranellored had to say about the matter:
A couple of things. Highly recommend getting a second opinion or checking the tread depth yourself. I’ve had my Tesla M3 AWD checked at America’s Tire (Discount Tire in California) and their fancy gizmo was about 2/32″ off the actual reading (operator error?)
To your point about tires wearing out faster, I’ve had to change the tires on an AWD Model 3 after about 34000 miles. This was after regular tire rotations every 6000 miles or so.
The tires definitely didn’t last me as long as a set of summer tires that I had on my Mazda RX8 which did about 40000 miles before needing to be changed.
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