But it makes little sense to offer a summer only tire if its all season counterpart can do the job just as well and reduce inventory. MB860 ?
My Costco tried to turn me away from EP100's, said they were to be discontinued soon. Just passing along that rumor....
I cannot find the web source but I used to have a printed brochure from Costco that said the EP422 was the "latest generation" of the Ecopia technology, which I presume means that it is an improvement over the first generation of Ecopia technology that the EP100 had. Also, do note that the EP100 cannot be found on the bridgestonetires.com website right now.
I found it as of this writing: http://www.bridgestonetire.com/productdetails/TireSubBrand/Ecopia_EP100
I have been posting to this site thinking that I had purchased Ecopia EP-100 tires from Costco. Your comment about them being summer tires hit me between they eyes because, you see, here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, we sometimes (not often) get a little SNOW. When I told my wife, she said if it snows we will just have to stay home. To be sure, I checked my bill of sale and the tires actually are EP-422's.:cheer2: Let it snow!
You're all set then! Actually, summer tires can still work in light snow but they are not the safest option.
Hi F8L.. I was just thinking about your indicated difference in MPG between 15 and 17 in wheels. It seems to me that the circumference of the 17 in tires must be greater which would throw off you odometer which I assume only counts revolutions. If so, the larger tire would result in under reported distance and MPG. Am I missing something here?
The difference in revolutions per mile is fairly insignificant. The actual size of the two are fairly similar because when you upgrade to a larger diameter wheel you compensate by using a lower profile tire so your rolling diameter stays as close to OEM as possible. That being said I do have a slightly larger tire/wheel combo than OEM so the odometer is likely slightly off and causing a small false mpg loss. The majority of my loss is due to the larger width and weight of the 17" tires as well as the construction which probably has a greater rolling resistance than my 15s. Right now I am seeing 51-54mpg with my 15s on and driving fairly conservative at 60mph mostly highway. My morning commute is at 34-38deg temps and my return trips is at about 45-50deg. The same conditions with my 17s would likely put me around 44-46mpg. I have to relly try hard to get 49-50mpg with the 17s and that is only possible in warm weather.
See Tire size calculator This would seem to suggest about a 4% under reporting (or about 2 mpg) when changing from 15 to 17 in.
I'm not sure what tire sizes you used for your calculation but a 185/65/15 (GenII OEM size) to a 215/45/17 is only 0.6% slower or underreporting. So according to the calculator the speedo would read 60mph when I was indeed traveling at 60.4mph. Again, this is using generic size information and not what the manufactures actual size or revs/mile. You can get the revs/mile info at TireRack.com. Using the GenIII OEM size of 195/65/15 to a 215/45/17 shows the 17 being 1.4% too fast or overreporting. So in their case a 205/50/17 (0.4% too slow) may be a better choice but since Toyota decided to use a 215/45/17 on the V model I would defer to their knowledge.
Also keep in mind that at >50mph the GenII speedo reads approx. 2mph too fast and the GenIII reads about 1-2mph too fast when using 15" wheels. I'm not sure about the 17" wheels. So the slightly larger wheels actually help fix the speedo error over 50mph. This assumes your 17s are lower in revs/mile than your OEM tires.
I installed the EP100's about 2 years ago and have 21k on them thus far. I had to install them as soon as we bought the car because the previous tires had a whopping 1/32" of tread remaining, but the Ecopia's have done very well. After 21k, I don't even notice any wear. I bought them for the sole purpose of being a summer tire and expecting them to do poorly in the winter. But here in Minnesota winter can come at any time, and for the last two winters I didn't put the 2nd set of dedicated snow tires on right away becuase I wanted to see how the EP100's did. They actually do fairly well on snow/ice all things considered. But I am so used to having a second set of dedicated snow tires on most all my vehicles, that I don't bother with a year round tire. Obviously, this is debatable as some people prefer a single tire all year round, but I quite frankly haven't seen anything handle the snow we can get here (not that we get the most snow in the country). But the big issue is the 600 foot elevation change that takes place in the city I live in. THAT makes a real challenge some times, and snow tires have been the best solution. Anyway, discontinued or not, I give the EP100's an A+. I bought them based on very limited reviews, but tire rack did have an official tire test in which the EP100's came in 2nd place (I think) and were significantly cheaper than the 1st place tire. Yet all around performance between the 1st place tire and the EP100 were actually very close. So, I didn't feel like shelling out another $100 for more expensive tires, as I didn't feel I could recoupe the cost or get anything "extra" out of it.
