Goodyear Eagle Exhilarate

Does anyone have any experience with this tire? I recently went to purchase LRR tires for the oem 17” five wheels, and they said that the recommended tire from Goodyear was the Exhilarate given the size. I had never heard of it so I took a few minutes to read about it, and there is mention of LRR properties, but I’m not sure that it would yield the same results as some of the other popular tires.

Also, what are most people inflating their 17’s tires to? When I was running the 15’s, I found that running 38 up front and 35 in the rear yielded the best mpgs for me. Not sure about the 17’s as I just put them on the car.

Thanks.

 

All right, I’ll be the first to chime in, since I ended up opting to try out these tires.

I’m happy to announce that the tires barely have ~300 miles so far and after a 3.5-hour long highway trip at a cruise-controlled 80mph speed I got a solid 42+ mpg! These are mounted on oem Prius Five wheels, and feel like a great compromise between grip and mpg performance.

I did not try any hypermiling techniques and simply drove from point A to point B. Taking into account the 17” wheels, the fact that the tires are new (new tires typically don’t yield optimal mpgs until after some use), and the car having European-style mudguards, these are some good numbers. By the way, I have them inflated to 40psi front and 38psi rear. I believe if I were to practice optimal speed and under optimal conditions, I would still see 48-51mpg depending on setting.

 

Displayed - I filled up before embarking on my weekend adventure and I have yet to need to refill. Once I do, I will provide the calculated value. Having said that, I watched it work its way up to 41.x, oscillating back and forth depending on wind, traffic (draft) etc., and then it slowly started inching towards 42mpg and eventually surpassed it. While displayed can be typically optimistic compared to calculated, I have a feeling they will be fairly close given the mostly constant driving conditions.

Could you please elaborate as to why you prefer to stick to spec psi in the tires? Most information I’ve read recommends running no more than 40psi but to stay around there for optimal numbers.

Thanks!

 

I’ll have to experiment with different pressures. So far 40/38psi are reminiscent of how my prior sports cars felt, and while the ride feels tighter, it’s not bad at all. Also, the suspension on the Prius is the softest of all cars I’ve owned, being that it is not a sports car and serves a different purpose. Thanks for the feedback on this. I believe that a tire that allows 51psi max would not be considered overinflated at 40psi, however, I am curious to try 33/32 or 33 all around and see if the results differ.

With that, I do have a final number for my first tank on these new tires: 40.9939424 mpg was my calculated number ... so about 41 mpg, and as I had suspected, only a couple of psi off the displayed estimate. By the time I pulled up to the pump, it had been going back and forth between 43.0 and 43.1 mpg on a trip that was 99% highway at a constant 80mph, and just a couple of city trips plus 1-2 short-range trips while the car was cold, which doesn’t necessarily yield the best mpg numbers.

The return trip was significantly different - while the distance and the speed were the same, we are expecting a hurricane to touch down in FL any minute, and the drive back was rather windy. I did not think that it would make much of a difference but I was wrong - I averaged about 38 mpg (calculated) with all other constants in place.

 

What size wheels/tires? Also, what gen Prius?

 

More mpg reporting: for this second tank of gas on the new tires, so far I’m getting a combined 49mpg displayed. I’ll have the calculated number once I need to feel up again (which will be in a while), but thus far my original impression of the tire hasn’t changed. I’m impressed considering that when I looked them up, I read reviews from people putting them on Camaros, Mustangs and other sports cars so I thought I’d be exchanging them before the trial period expires, but it doesn’t seem like that will be the case.