Michelin AS energy saver discontinued

That's an important consideration. Michelin still has them on their website as does Tire Rack. Good luck!

 

this came up before and turned out to be false. i would try to get an answer from mich.

 

Many D.T. stores are having difficulty stocking them, and their area warehouses also don't seem to be doing so. But they can still order them direct from Michelin if they bother to try. Most likely this particular person didn't bother to go beyond his local inventory. They don't even have a part number for them. In any case, Michelin is still selling them.

 

I had Michelin Energy tires on my Gen II. When a road hazard took out the sidewall of one tire, I had a replacement tire on order with Michelin for nine months, before Michelin customer service finally advised they would be unable to service the tires and I'd need to replace them with something else. The tires were three months old at the time the damage occurred, and I drove on a crappy "loaner" from the tire dealer for nine months before needing to scrap the entire set and buy another set of tires. Michelin would not replace the tires, I had to purchase the replacements.

I was dealing directly with Michelin headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, not the tire dealer. The point is that Michelin customer service; isn't.

 

Got over 10K miles on my Michelin Defenders now averaging 55 mpg with no hypermiling in ECO mode. Tire pressure set to 38 psi upfront and 36 psi for the rear.

 

That is good info but unfort I think there are many Prius drivers posting Defender not good for Prius MPG, so we would have to sort that out.

I was trying to convince my self to pay $200 more for A/S vs. something like Conti EcoPlus you an get for much less $$$. The A/S seems to have stellar ratings for all handling characteristics and MPG, but not stellar users ratings. I guess users saying you pay ~$200 more and maybe get a couple years better MPG but may not pay off the tire cost. But hard to beat the snow wet dry handling and MPG is great too for A/S.

PS- I am thinking 4 new A/S before winter

 

Its important to differentiate between ES and ES-A/S. The plain ES tire is a cheaper OEM tire that's not available to the public AFAIK. The A/S tire is a consumer tire that is very much available with some availability issues in specific sizes.

 

I run my new new ES-A/S at 5# over and saw an immediate gain in MPG over the OEM tires at the same pressure. Better handling, much quieter, etc. You could run those cheap dealer tires at 40+ for a while and see what they do. Keep in mind that I'm the guy who buys new cars and immediately throws away the OEM tires - but I've never been sorry I did.