Tires

If you own the FFE, you own some pretty silly 'eco' tires. Sure, they get me around. They make driving more fun because they don't excel at anything, so the thresholds for sliding are lower. To me, more fun. They paw at the ground or any loose ground cover like a cat on a polished wooden floor chasing a laser dot. Maybe not that bad, but you get the idea. Stickier tires would help performance and feel. I know that would reduce the range based on friction, but seriously, how much? 1%? 2%? Noticeable? Has anyone replaced their tires and noticed any apparent range reduction?

I love being able to spin my tires at will , but you are right. I worry as I careen around a corner or when I have to stop in a hurry .

A couple of sources (links are below) indicate (from what I can glean) that a tire with 20% less rolling resistance would result in about a 3% gain in economy (i.e. mpg, or in our case miles/kWh). So hypothetically if a performance oriented tire with 20% to 30% more rolling resistance replaced the OEM tire on our FFE, it could result in a reduction of 2 to 4 miles of range, assuming a 76 mile range.

I couldn't find a current list of tires with RRC (rolling resistance coefficient) or RRF (rolling resistance force), so it's hard to say... but looking at an old list of tire models from 2009, seems like there might be a 30% difference between high efficiency tires and high performance tires.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=175
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/testDisplay.jsp?ttid=121
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/conserve/fuel_economy_tires_light.html
http://www.energy.ca.gov/transportation/tire_efficiency/documents/2009-06-10_workshop/presentations/excel_files/