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LRR tires worth it?

D

desura

Diamond Member
My hybrid car's tires will need replacing soon. I'm still on the OEM LRR tires.

There have been times when the grip left something to be desired. Also in my area there are a lot of gravel roads.

And on top of that, LRR tires look like they're 30-50 percent more expensive.

So if I just get regular summer tires will I miss my old LRR?
 
You'll definitely notice a drop in fuel economy.

So, the question is what do you prioritize; Fuel economy or grip?
 
I say 100% Yes on a hybrid. It was designed for those tires. When you put tires that have more drag, it will get worse mileage (not hugely, but maybe 10%), put more drag on the battery, and make the car slower 0-60. I had sticky sports tires my 01 Insight and it was fun, but when I switched to the OEM LRR it was quicker 0-60, held those speeds using considerably less gas an electric assist. It was much better to drive with the LRR tires.

But what model is it, what tires are they, and what are you putting on instead?
 
I like Yokohama's Avid Ascend tires. Low rolling resistance and relatively good for fuel economy, but with some grip.

My current car has Advan (also Yokohama, with similar orange oil compound in the rubber, IIRC) tires, but my Mustang had the same OEM tires (Michelin Energy Saver) used on some older Prius models, which is great for fuel economy but not a lot of traction. Swapped out with the Ascends, and felt they were good compromise.
 
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The way I see it, I'm already driving a hybrid car, and so gains from LRR tires are reduced.

And as I mentioned, LRR tires are expensive, so fuel savings over the life would likely be a wash. They seem built for smooth pavement as well. It looks like LRR is built to the opposite of what tires are normally marketed for: grip. They seem to be marketed for their lack of grip, and beyond that aren't good for gravel roads or the various potholes I see everyday.
 
What are we talking about though? My CR-Z was equipped with Bridgestone Ecopia something or other....EL400 comes to mind. Grip was beyond acceptable and they are definitely LRR. I pushed that car plenty hard on mountain roads too.
 
desura said:
The way I see it, I'm already driving a hybrid car, and so gains from LRR tires are reduced.

And as I mentioned, LRR tires are expensive, so fuel savings over the life would likely be a wash. They seem built for smooth pavement as well. It looks like LRR is built to the opposite of what tires are normally marketed for: grip. They seem to be marketed for their lack of grip, and beyond that aren't good for gravel roads or the various potholes I see everyday.
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Not sure how hybrids or any car can necessarily be "designed" for LRR, other than maybe suspension tuning (softer) more suited for a harder sidewall, but I think this is similar for runflats. It's more the case that hybrid owner chase after every source of fuel economy and you're sure to lose a little bit with normal tires.
 
Many cars come standard with LRR tires theses days. It's an easy was to squeeze out some efficiency. The difference in rolling resistance can be staggering.
 
agent00f said:
Not sure how hybrids or any car can necessarily be "designed" for LRR, other than maybe suspension tuning (softer) more suited for a harder sidewall, but I think this is similar for runflats. It's more the case that hybrid owner chase after every source of fuel economy and you're sure to lose a little bit with normal tires.
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Take a Honda Insight as an example - the car I have experience with this. If you're at 60 MPH and approach a hill, you use the hybrid battery to climb the hill. If you have the LRR tires, you barely need to apply any throttle to maintain that 60 MPH. If you have bigger, grippier, summer tires (which I did on mine), you had to give it say, 20% extra throttle to maintain the 60 MPH up hill. At the top of a big hill, with my LRR tires would still have 90% battery. With the grippy tires, it would be down to 50% or so. Gas mileage aside, that's another charge/discharge cycle and eventually the NiMH battery wears out much sooner I'd estimate from that.

The same problem occurs if you decide to drive 75 MPH instead of 55 MPH. You can hold 75 MPH with either tire, but the electric motor will drain the battery significantly when you're holding that speed, instead of relying on the ICE alone to gently cruise at 75. You have to give it more throttle, so you use more battery juice, at any speed where tire drag becomes noticeable. These LRR tires are designed to hold cruising speeds without using the battery. When you dip into more throttle %, it uses the battery and depletes it. It could even be bad for the battery because it'll be run low all the time. That happened with my Insight regularly. It also felt way quicker and more nimble with the stock tires. Yes it could hold higher cornering speeds with the grippy tires, but it was a major mismatch with the low power, small engine.

It could hold 70 MPH with very little throttle input (which in the case of the Insight puts it into Lean Burn mode and it gets 80+ MPG) w/ LRR, but barely hold 60 with the grippy tires and the same throttle, putting me into regular mode which gets 50 MPG. The gas mileage loss on top of that around town is still just one part of the puzzle, but I think the car is absolutely designed with the LRR tires in mind on EVs and hyrids. Disclaimer - My direct experience on these only applies to the Honda Insight.
 
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But really the same theories apply to any car. Less rolling resistance = less power needed to move the vehicle = less gas used. It's just more obvious in some cars than others.
 
NutBucket said:
But really the same theories apply to any car. Less rolling resistance = less power needed to move the vehicle = less gas used. It's just more obvious in some cars than others.
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For hybrid cars the gains from using LRR are not as dramatic as the gains would be on non-hybrids. They only put LRR's because of the marketing and segment appeal of hybrid cars. But generally I've found my LRR tires to be pretty harsh riding and not the best for gravel roads or roads with flaws in them.
 
NutBucket said:
But really the same theories apply to any car. Less rolling resistance = less power needed to move the vehicle = less gas used. It's just more obvious in some cars than others.
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Yeah but my point is it puts extra load and charge/discharge on the battery and on a low powered car designed to use those things to keep up at higher speeds, it's quite obvious the car has the wrong tires.
 
My hybrid has a healthy amount of power, better than a Toyota Corolla by a healthy amount, comparable to a Subaru Legacy and a little better.
 
I replaced all tires on my Prius with Michelin Premier A/S. Nice tire and my fuel economy has not been affected. Costco right now has instant $70 off. I paid $560 OTD installed.
 
tweakmonkey said:
Yeah but my point is it puts extra load and charge/discharge on the battery and on a low powered car designed to use those things to keep up at higher speeds, it's quite obvious the car has the wrong tires.
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Out of curiosity, what size were the stock LRR tires on your insight vs the performance tires that you had on there?
 
tweakmonkey said:
Take a Honda Insight as an example - the car I have experience with this. If you're at 60 MPH and approach a hill, you use the hybrid battery to climb the hill. If you have the LRR tires, you barely need to apply any throttle to maintain that 60 MPH. If you have bigger, grippier, summer tires (which I did on mine), you had to give it say, 20% extra throttle to maintain the 60 MPH up hill. At the top of a big hill, with my LRR tires would still have 90% battery. With the grippy tires, it would be down to 50% or so. Gas mileage aside, that's another charge/discharge cycle and eventually the NiMH battery wears out much sooner I'd estimate from that.

The same problem occurs if you decide to drive 75 MPH instead of 55 MPH. You can hold 75 MPH with either tire, but the electric motor will drain the battery significantly when you're holding that speed, instead of relying on the ICE alone to gently cruise at 75. You have to give it more throttle, so you use more battery juice, at any speed where tire drag becomes noticeable. These LRR tires are designed to hold cruising speeds without using the battery. When you dip into more throttle %, it uses the battery and depletes it. It could even be bad for the battery because it'll be run low all the time. That happened with my Insight regularly. It also felt way quicker and more nimble with the stock tires. Yes it could hold higher cornering speeds with the grippy tires, but it was a major mismatch with the low power, small engine.

It could hold 70 MPH with very little throttle input (which in the case of the Insight puts it into Lean Burn mode and it gets 80+ MPG) w/ LRR, but barely hold 60 with the grippy tires and the same throttle, putting me into regular mode which gets 50 MPG. The gas mileage loss on top of that around town is still just one part of the puzzle, but I think the car is absolutely designed with the LRR tires in mind on EVs and hyrids. Disclaimer - My direct experience on these only applies to the Honda Insight.
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There's something wrong with this description since >60mph tire rolling resistance is dwarfed by aero drag. The biggest gains if much of any will be at low speed.
 
tweakmonkey said:
P165/65R14 vs 185/65/14 IIRC
Definitely bigger and that didn't help either 🙂
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In your MPG calculations, did you take into account that your spedo was off because of the larger diameter tire? You would have actually been going faster (or father) per tire revolution and thus calcs may have been off a bit (i.e. you were actually going almost 63mph with the taller tire as compared to the LRR stock size tire if you didn't adjust your speedo). The hill example you gave seems to be really hard to believe - just wondering if there is a better explanation for it.
 
agent00f said:
There's something wrong with this description since >60mph tire rolling resistance is dwarfed by aero drag. The biggest gains if much of any will be at low speed.
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Maybe in a truck but this is a 2001 Insight. Very sleek, low drag design and small frontal surface area. It makes a big difference at higher speeds.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/conserve/fuel_economy_tires_light.html#highway

I had two friends who also had these cars for many years. Between the three cars we put over 100k miles and the LRR cars were considerably better at highway speeds. A lot of this might've been due to this specific vehicle design. It had very long gears with the manual trans, it used a 25:1(?) lean burn mode if you were gentle on the gas at the right rpms - and if you had grippy tires it couldn't hold that speed at that throttle. But it also felt much slower. And there is a mountain of forum threads for these cars about this topic.
 
Wuzup101 said:
In your MPG calculations, did you take into account that your spedo was off because of the larger diameter tire? You would have actually been going faster (or father) per tire revolution and thus calcs may have been off a bit (i.e. you were actually going almost 63mph with the taller tire as compared to the LRR stock size tire if you didn't adjust your speedo). The hill example you gave seems to be really hard to believe - just wondering if there is a better explanation for it.
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It felt like a different car. Ignoring mpg it just felt totally different with those bigger stickier tires vs the LRR and the mileage was as much as 20% lower at some speeds. See my previous post. My average mpg went from 52 to around 58. Also I don't remember the exact size but I believe it was actually something like 185/55 vs 165/60 and they had the same overall height. It was years ago ... But the speedo was accurate.
 
tweakmonkey said:
Maybe in a truck but this is a 2001 Insight. Very sleek, low drag design and small frontal surface area. It makes a big difference at higher speeds.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/conserve/fuel_economy_tires_light.html#highway

I had two friends who also had these cars for many years. Between the three cars we put over 100k miles and the LRR cars were considerably better at highway speeds. A lot of this might've been due to this specific vehicle design. It had very long gears with the manual trans, it used a 25:1(?) lean burn mode if you were gentle on the gas at the right rpms - and if you had grippy tires it couldn't hold that speed at that throttle. But it also felt much slower. And there is a mountain of forum threads for these cars about this topic.
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It's simply a matter of ratios that LRR's will help more at lower speeds. The insight doesn't break the fundamental physics of drag increasing at speed^2 and rolling resistance closer to if not less than linear.
 
Check the link I posted (LRR tires at highway speeds) and re read what I posted specifically about lean burn. The insight was absolutely designed with LRR tires in mind and changing them has a huge effect on its ability to maintain speed and use lean burn mode simultaneously at highway speeds which is based on rpm and throttle input. That's all I was posting about. Go drive one if you don't believe me, and see how lean burn works.

That doesn't mean OP needs LRR tires or it would have such a drastic effect on all cars. But on an Insight it's huge.

Is aerodynamic drag a bigger factor at 60? Yes. Is tire drag still a factor at 60? Yes.

I don't remember saying they won't help more at lower speeds...
 
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