> Only 30k, Chris (and I do hope you mean miles and not kilometers)! That
> must be a very soft tire compound. The original tires on my Honda CR-V
> (Continentals) only lasted 45k miles, but the Firestones that replaced them
> have lasted 80k miles (just started my third set).
Agreed. That is a bit munchy.
We get about 45k miles on the Prius tires, depending on the tires
purchased. The key, for us, is to get the highest-quality Goodyear or
Michelin tire. I believe that the last really good set of Goodyears
lasted about 55k miles. That's as far as I can run a small tire on
pretty much any car. For the Jeep, we were using Goodyear Wrangler
Silent-Armour tires, which have an incredibly long life-span and still
have an awesome tread. The tires on the Jeep, which we just traded in
had just short of 70k miles on them and they still had another 20k
miles worth of life in them. That's been about our normal span for
them, 80-100k miles.
The Michelins on the X5 run about 70k miles.
Brand of tire really is important. While there isn't a Firestone tire
that I'll personally touch, the Continentals and other Chinese import
tires are ones I'll stay away from completely. Our Jeep had a brand
new set of no-names on it when we bought it and they didn't last 35k
miles. The Goodyear S-A tires last twice as long.
I'm very picky when it comes to tires and we always have to special
order them from the shop. I do my research and it does pay off when
you end up getting 50-100% more life out of them than the normal
too-soft compound tire.
A side-note item. The tires on the X5 are specially grooved so they
keep opening up new grooves as they wear and the main channels are
inverted in a way that they get wider as the tire wears, to maximize
water shedding. They really work. But they aren't perfect. I was
driving in a completely torrential rainstorm (Rain-X is great) and
didn't slow down as much as i should have. The road had the wear
depressions in it and about 2-3 inches of standing water. I hit that
going about 70 MPH and had all four tires hydroplaning like a
speedboat. Traction control kicked in to stop wheel spin, but in doing
so, caused complete loss of directional control (you can usually power
your way through a drift). The tires stopped hydroplaning at about 35
MPH, so it took a few lifespans to get whoad up from 70 to 35 with no
control whatsoever.
Back to the Prius. We do tend to run the tires a little on the hard
side in the Prius. Typically, I put an extra five pounds in my tires,
as a matter of course, but with the Prius, we can run those up to 10
pounds over. There are people who will run them up to 30 pounds over,
but the ride is way too brutal. We usually keep them 5-10 over,
varying it a bit to control tire wear. The hyper-milers will get quite
selective with the tires and pressures and can get an extra 5-10 MPG
just through that. But they end up spending the saved money on
chiropractor appointments.
AG Schnozz
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