Filed under: MPG, Legislation and Policy
EU could effectively kill high performance cars by banning their tires
The idea of reducing the rolling resistance of tires to improve efficiency is certainly not a new one. Tire manufacturers have been making improvements in this area for years. Most electric and hybrid vehicles use extremely low rolling resistance tires in order to cut rolling drag to a bare minimum. A new proposal from the European Commission would make these types of tires mandatory beginning in 2012. The proposal would set the maximum drag for new tires limited to 12kg/tonne in 2012, and then 10.5kg/tonne in 2014. The only problem with this is that reducing rolling resistance generally also reduces traction. If implemented, the new limits could effectively ban the wide tires used by high performance cars. Without these high grip tires, such cars would be essentially undrivable. The commission hopes the change will reduce CO2 emissions by up to five percent.
[Source: AutoExpress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Yanquetino 10:46AM (12/01/2008)
The EU does better than this country in many respects, but this idea is overkill. I doubt that they have seriously considered the consequences. Forget about the small number of high-performance cars it would affect: what about the hordes of vehicles --all shapes and sizes-- that need snow tires in those Northern European winters? It would only take a few pileups on a snowy autobahn before they realized they were paying more for collision repairs, higher insurance premiums, and lives than they had saved in fuel costs and CO2 emissions.
Reply
Ignatius 11:09AM (12/01/2008)
I think they'll probably write in an exception for snow tires. It'd be silly not to account for weather in that. Although that means you could probably just slap snowtires on your exotic and keep burning gas.
Reply
kballs 12:10PM (12/01/2008)
Traction and low rolling resistance don't have to be mutually exclusive (many modern passenger tires have lower rolling resistance while maintaining equal traction), but when you're trying to have absolute maximum traction (at the sacrifice of many other variables) for a performance car you're not likely to come anywhere close to these proposed RR standards...
It seems like they need exceptions and/or to have different rolling resistance standards for different tire widths (otherwise it's effectively like banning all tires greater than a certain width).
Reply
dr61 12:39PM (12/01/2008)
+1 - some winter tires have very low rolling resistance. And there are some high performance summer tires with reasonably low rolling resistance. High performance cars may corner a bit slower with low rolling resistance tires, but 'undrivable?' - no way.
Peter 12:38PM (12/01/2008)
A high dry grip rating is not necessarily related to how much fun a vehicle is to drive. The Dodge Ram SRT-10 Pickup pulls 0.92g while a Mazda RX-8 pulls 0.90g. Meanwhile the RX-8 is considered one of the most balanced modern sports cars while the Ram is considered a novelty.
Reply
radler63 12:41PM (12/01/2008)
and if you look into the future- tires will have two air chambers- if you need more grip then one chamber will deflate or inflate and the tire will have more contact to the road surface or bring another rubber type into action...
Reply
moogy 3:14PM (12/01/2008)
This is not a very good idea and in the long run... it's unsafe in my mind. I would rather have high traction tires just to be on the safe side... specially when talking about rain, snow, etc.
Just a bad idea.
Reply
duffman 4:06PM (12/01/2008)
What about high performance cars from Lotus that need these tires, including Tesla and Dodge EV? (not to mention the Elise that gets close to 30 mpg).
Reply
Wildgoosechase 4:55PM (12/01/2008)
What will happen is that the supercars will be certified with low traction tires and then at the dealer the spec tires will be installed with "custom" rims. This will also open the door to other dealer installed parts like superchargers. The computer will be updated and the mandate will be irrelavent.
Reply
DasBoese 6:33AM (12/02/2008)
Not gonna happen.
The tradeoff for lower rolling resistance is reduced grip. There are ways to mitigate it to some extent, but in the end you can't beat physics. With that comes reduced performance in bad weather and critical situations, leading to a decrease in safety.
Our government is crawling with safety nannies, which is sometimes a problem, but in this case not because they'd never let this get through.
And then there's the substantial influence of European automakers. Any such legislation would face severe opposition from at least Italy, France and Germany, which is almost a guarantee that it'll fail.
Reply
jim 9:25AM (12/02/2008)
Let's not confuse high performance i.e. speed, acceleration and high cornering limits with fun to drive. Most of today's performance cars are flat boring to drive at real, everyday speeds.
The most fun I've had behind the wheel was in a car with 4" wide tires and about 50 HP, an MG TD. You used a calendar to measure acceleration, but I induced a 4 wheel drift at about 6 MPH making a U-turn in a cul-de-sac. You can drive the snot out of one of those beauties and not get a ticket in a school zone while having a great time.
Balance and light weight and proportioned grip make for fun driving.
Reply
Rbic 11:17AM (12/02/2008)
I can see where the EU is coming with this idea but I agree that some exceptions need to be made. I drove an older Jetta that was fitted with new LRR tires and rims, and for someone that can handle themselves in a spin it was fine. It was actually easier to get that FWD car sideways then most current day sports cars that have traction control. Now if the car is designed specifically designed to maximize grip using LRR tires then its a different idea but most cars that come with them standard now (eg. Polo Bluemotion) are just the same car with a few tweaks. I know quite a few people that would have serious problems the first time it rained if they were forced to drive a car like that.
Reply
Joey Mazz 9:50PM (12/02/2008)
This is big government trying to micro-manage people's lives at it's worst! The style, size, and type of tire that goes on a car should be up to the customer in a tire shop based on his/her needs, not by a bureaucrat who doesn't know anything about cars or tires. I agree with the sentiment that it will only take one massive pileup on the autobahn when a bunch of BMWs slide off the road because their "eco'friendly" tires don't actually grip anything.
Reply
Chris M 10:05PM (12/03/2008)
The major component in rolling resistance is the flexing of the rubber - less flexing equals less energy wasted as heat and lower rolling resistance. Thats why under-inflated tires have higher rolling resistance and are more likely to fail - they flex too much and overheat!
Ironically, one way to get both high traction and low rolling resistance would be to use a wider tire under higher pressure - the higher pressure would assure less rubber flexing, and the greater width assures adequate contact area.
Reply
Jim 5:19PM (12/05/2008)
I highly doubt this will be the nail in the coffin of European high performance cars - the CO2 and fuel economy regulations will kill them first.
Reply
Avinash machado 7:56AM (12/07/2008)
EU is becoming more like a communist state.
Reply