I've heard that the Prius will wear tires faster than expected. Is this due to extra wieght of the batteries? Do you do anything such as increase tire pressure or have wheel alignment checked?
Here's a non-technical person's explanation, subject to correction by those smarter than me. It's probably a combination of things. With all tires there are tradeoffs as tire manufacturers balance tread life, handling (wet and dry), stopping, ride, rolling resistance, etc. The Goodyear Integrity is a low rolling resistance tire. In this case, IMHO, tread life seems to be one of things that suffers to get LRR. Add to that a fairly small tire on a relatively heavy car -- battery weight being just one small contributor. My fiancee's Corolla has the same size tires, for example. I expect she'll see longer tread life on hers. Then put that heavy car on those small tires and keep the tires at, say, 32 PSI, and you'll probably cause the tire to squat a bit more and, in the process, accelerate wear on the edges -- a common observation among Prius owners. All this of course is independent of correctable mechanical problems such as mis-alignment that further accelerate wear. As an example of tradeoffs: I recently replaced mine with Michelin Hydroedges. A 90,000 mile tire, supposedly with great bad weather handling. We'll see about the tread life, but I do like the handling. It hugged the wet mountain roads very well during my recent drive to Hybridfest. But I've lost what I estimate to be 5-10% in fuel economy. Hopefully some of that is due to them being new tires, rolling resistance of which is reported to gradually lessen as the tires wear. But I'm not confident I'll ever regain all of what I've lost.
I lost 2 mpgs immediately upon substituting the stock tires with Goodyear Viva2s. Those mpgs never came back. The Viva2s are due to be replaced in 5000 miles or so and I'm going back to the stock tire.
The stock tires are low rolling resistence (LRR) tires. They slightly increase your mileage with the drawback that they do not have the lifespan of conventional tires. Given the grotesque number of miles that I drive, I was stunned at how quickly they wore out. I switched to a high-mileage tire, and the problem went away.
JimboK's, non techie, explanation is about as good an explanation as your gonna get. He hit the nail on the head.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimboK @ Aug 3 2007, 09:19 AM) [snapback]489892[/snapback]</div> Are you keeping tire pressure at 32, or as I've seen on some posts up to 50 psi?
Well whoever told you that the "weight of the batteries" would wear out the Prius tires faster was a retard. No offense to retards. But the Prius is one of if not the lightest car in its class.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stukid @ Aug 3 2007, 09:37 PM) [snapback]490263[/snapback]</div> I'm not sure you want to know. Seriously, I had the Michelins at 50/48 when I first got them. I pumped them up to 65 PSI for the Hybridfest MPG Challenge. Then I was about halfway into my 1000 mile drive home when I realized I hadn't dropped them back down. But they did fine and I left them there. Admittedly, ~500 miles on a smooth interstate is not a reliable test at all, and some here might understandably say, "That's foolish." (I prefer to consider it fuelish!) But given that most of my driving is at much lower speeds, I've been in no hurry to let some air out. Others whose advice I trust suggest I'm fine.
