EV bashers love to bring up tire wear, and they have a point. In the early days of the electric car revolution, these new machines were shod with the same rubber that cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) used. As it turns out, those tires weren’t designed to handle the unique qualities of an EV, and as such, they wore through their treads quickly.
Some horror stories would have you believe that tires last only 10,000 miles on an EV. While there are surely owners who have hooned their cars through a perfectly good set of tires on that timeline, it’s the extreme. It is the case, however, that a set of traditional tires could wear out in around 20,000-30,000 miles on an EV. That’s why EV’s need tires designed specifically for them such as the iON line of EV-specific tires by Hankook Tire.
The iON is an upgrade over traditional tires in nearly every way. These advanced tires are specifically designed to overcome the four main challenges an EV presents: noise, grip, rolling resistance, and, of course, tread life. EVs are obviously quiet, which means road noise from their tires needs to be eliminated or else it’s the only thing a driver hears. Low rolling resistance, meanwhile, increases an EV’s efficiency, and therefore its range. Grip, the opposite of low rolling resistance, is also important because electric motors generate so much torque; without it EVs would lay smoky burnouts at every stop light.
And then there’s tread life. Why can premature tire wear happen with EVs? The answer is simple: weight. According to Hankook Tire, EVs weigh on average 30% more than a similarly sized traditional car. All that weight comes from their battery packs, which are dense and heavy. While automakers have generally beefed up their cars’ mechanicals to handle that extra weight, not enough attention has been paid to tires.
More weight means the amount of friction between the tire and the road is higher, a major contributing factor to tire wear. And when an EV accelerates or goes around a corner, that friction increases even more as the weight shifts from front to back and side to side.
What’s more, EVs are powerful. Their electric motors produce a lot of grunt and get it to the ground quickly. That makes EVs awfully fun to drive, be they SUVs, big sedans, or little hatchbacks. On account of this, owners often drive their EVs harder and faster than typical gas-powered cars. This type of driving also leads to quicker tire wear, and it’s worsened by the extra weight of the battery pack.
Hankook Tire has integrated a total of 58 commercialized patents into its iON tires, no less than 11 of which are dedicated entirely to increasing tread life. Perhaps the two most important involve ProDurable Compound, which is designed to extend tire life using a special compound, and Round Even, which creates a more uniform contact patch between the tire and the road.
The ProDurable Compound in iON tires is a proprietary recipe for high durability rubber. We can’t tell you what’s in it, but we can say it employs both a high-concentration silica and eco-friendly compounds to achieve its end. The end result is rubber that lasts longer despite the increased load they’re carrying.
Likewise, Hankook engineers spent a lot of time working on where the rubber meets the road to develop Round Even technology. Any deformation of a tire’s contact patch with the road can lead to uneven wear of the rubber, which greatly reduces its usable life. Round Even employs a suite of technologies including stiffer sidewalls to ensure the tire’s ground pressure is optimized for the longest possible tire life.
None of these advancements would mean anything if iON tires didn’t perform in the real world, and they do. Hankook Tire knows this and backs its EV-specific tires with a 50,000-mile warranty against premature wear. That should be enough to silence even the most ardent EV bashers. The company also gives you 30 days to try out a set of iON tires on your EV to make sure they deliver what they promise.
Of course, it doesn’t matter how good the iON line of EV-specific tires is if there isn’t a set that fits your car and the conditions in which you drive it. Hankook Tire really excels here, offering iON tires across 7 separate product lines:
- iON evo AS: all-season performance tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON evo: summer sport tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON i*cept: alpine winter studless tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON FlexClimate: all-weather performance tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON Nordic ice: nordic winter studded tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON GT: summer touring tire for passenger cars and SUVs
- iON ST AS: all-season touring tire for passenger cars and SUVs
And Hankook Tire is adding more sizes to the iON line every day. The company plans on adding 49 more sizes by the end of 2024, bringing the total count to 259 sizes. There should be an iON tire that fits every electric car, truck, and SUV on sale in America.
When arguing with EV critics, premature tire wear has been the one point we’ve had to concede, until now. With the iON line of EV-specific tires by Hankook Tire, you’re guaranteed 50,000 miles of trouble-free driving that includes all the grip you could ever want, silent and smooth operation, greater electric driving range, and the confidence your tread will last as long as any ICE car’s.
