Sudden range reduction caused by new tires?

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BigEdgar

Active member
Joined
Sep 7, 2015
Messages
30
Hi, I recently got new tires and am noticing that my range has dropped by about 15%.

A little bit of context - we had a tire blow out just before the start of our State's COVID-19 shutdown, and while I'd usually do a bunch of research on something like new tires, it wasn't clear when things would re-open to get new tires and I knew I'd need the car in the meantime, so we took a chance and got whatever tires were in stock. Our tires were getting close to the end of their life, so we got 4 new tires.

The new tires are Nexen CP671, which are not low rolling resistance (LRR) tires like the original Nexens that came on our 2016 Soul EV.

The good - I'm in the Pacific Northwest in the US and we have alot of rainy days here - the original tires were terrible for traction (lots of slippage on wet pavement). The new Nexen CP671 tires have awesome grip and no slippage - that's a big plus for me.

The bad - My range seems to be down by quite a bit. I have a trip over the mountains that I frequently take and I have to charge once along the way. I can usually make this trip between May and October with a single stop to charge. However, I recently tried the trip and was surprised to see that I couldn't even make it to my first charge spot on a full battery. I did some calculations based on historical trips and estimate that my range is down by 15% versus this same time last year.

I know I haven't lost 15% battery capacity in one year. And while the GOM is usually pretty accurate (or even a little conservative) for my drives around the region, I'm noticing that the GOM is consistently off now, overstating what my actual range turns out to be.

I think the reason for the reduction in range is the new tires (SoulSpy says my SOH is 94% and that hasn't changed a ton since last year, so I don't think the battery is the issue).

I'm wondering if other people have experienced a similar loss in range with all-season tires, or after switching away from LRR tires. I'm also wondering if perhaps the tire shop did something wrong on the installation to where the range has been compromised.

Thanks for any thoughts!
 
I don't have any feedback but I am wondering about the same thing, also in PNW here and wondering how critical the LRR tires are to range
 
What is your efficiency showing? I just had to get tires myself (two non-repairables so I did all 4) and ended up with some non-LRR tires. mostly 3.9-4mi/kWh on the way home which is pretty typical for me, though I will have to see how I do with more regular driving.
 
Normally the tires can not make more than 5% difference. even if you choose a little wider tires. There must be another factor
 
Omar said:
Normally the tires can not make more than 5% difference. even if you choose a little wider tires. There must be another factor

I am with Omar on this one. Now that I have spent some time with the new tires, I have noticed very little change in my efficiency overall. 4.6mi/kWh puttering around town (<40MPH, little or no AC), ~3.6mi/kWh doing 70 with some AC driving between Portland and Seattle.
 
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