Tires designed specifically for electric vehicles are different from standard tires. They’re designed to do different things. Do their differences mean that EV tires can’t be repaired like standard tires if they’re losing air due to a foreign object like a nail or a piece of glass? Not necessarily, though the process may be more involved.
First, let’s talk about one of the key ways EV tires are different from standard tires. Tire manufacturers ran into a problem with the advent of modern-day electric vehicles. With combustion gone, all of the noise, vibration, and harshness that accompanied it was also absent. What was left, however, was not silence, but rather the thrum of tire noise from all four corners. Their solution? Foam.
Many EV-specific tires have a layer of sound-deadening foam glued to the inside of the tire. This foam dampens the noise that comes from the friction between the tire and the road, but it can present a problem when a repair is necessary.
As with standard tires, EV tires losing air should not be plugged from the outside as a temporary solution. Doing so could damage the foam on the inside, and some people drive on plugged tires for far longer than just a trip to a service center, which risks even more damage to the tire and makes for unsafe driving. Ultimately, tires need to be taken off the rim to evaluate the extent of internal damage from a leak.
After you get your car to a service center, the tire must be patched from the inside in order to be fully repaired, especially if it has sound-deadening foam. This involves removing the wheel from the car and unmounting the tire from the wheel. A technician then cuts away the foam that covers the air leak so that a patch can be applied from the inside. Once the patch is in place and dry, the technician glues back in place the sound-deadening foam that was removed.
If an EV-specific tire with sound-deadening foam sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, there are EV-specific tires without this feature that can be repaired just like a standard tire. Sailun, for instance, makes the ERange EV line of tires. This impressive product gives you all the benefits of EV-specific tires such as longer range, a higher weight-bearing capacity, and, yes, even quieter operation, without using any materials inside the tire like foam.
Instead, Sailun uses a combination of technologies to achieve a quiet ride. For starters, the tread design itself, called SilentTread, uses staggered tuning technology and variable pitch sequence for the quietest operation possible. This design was tested both in the lab and on the road to surpass the company’s sound goals.
ERange EV tires also employ specially formulated rubber compounds that, in addition to contributing to less noise, bring less rolling resistance and a longer lasting life. Lastly, ERange EV tires are purposely built with enhanced casing and sidewall construction to carry the increased weight of EV battery packs. This helps the tire avoid deforming under pressure and increasing the size of its contact patch, thereby maintaining a quiet and comfortable ride.
Since EVs today come in all shapes and sizes, Sailun continues to expand its line of ERange EV tires to fit them all, including new sizes available for electric SUVs and crossover vehicles. The company also stands behind its products with a new warranty for 2024 that covers tires for up to 50,000 miles or 60 months.
And all of this without foam. Sound-deadening foam has been a stop-gap measure that tire manufacturers use to fix an immediate challenge they faced when EVs went mainstream. Unfortunately, foam brought with it more problems, including the complexity required to repair a tire when a repair is necessary.
Thankfully, tire companies like Sailun have spent their time designing a better EV-specific tire using different materials, different methods, and different goals. The result, the ERange EV tire, makes owning an EV as easy as we were promised.
