Electric cars don’t just trade fuel tanks for batteries and engines for electric motors. EV owners can choose tires made specifically for electric cars too.
To show off what makes its electric car-specific rubber different, Hankook brought its iON line of EV tires to the Demo Days Festival, North America’s largest outdoor test drive event. We were in attendance to learn why EVs even need dedicated tires—and to put Hankook’s iON line of EV tires through their paces.
In a nutshell, EVs tend to be torquier than an equivalent gas car. It’s why they can get away from a stop light so quickly and smush you back into your seat. They’re also generally heavier. All of this means EVs can wear out regular tires originally designed for gas cars a lot quicker than a combustion vehicle would. EV tires, like the iON line from Hankook, are designed with this challenge in mind.
They’ve also been engineered for minimal road noise—sipes on the inner tread and a foam insert on the tire’s interior keep things quiet—which is critical since EVs don’t have a gas engine to drown it all out. iON tires have also been developed to maximize driving range. Their structure, tread pattern, and compound all combine for lower rolling resistance, which helps EVs use less energy as they drive down the road. Hankook estimates that choosing iON tires can boost an EV's range on a full charge by 6%.
We got behind the wheel of a Lucid Gravity wearing Hankook’s iON evo AS all-season tires to see what these tires are all about. This electric luxury SUV weighs about 6,000 pounds and makes 909 lb-ft of torque virtually instantly—a perfect stress test for any tire.
Hankook’s showcases at Demo Days in Los Angeles and San Francisco are over. But if you’d like to try iONs out on your own EV, Hankook offers a SureTire Plan free trial that lets you return the tires free of charge within 100 days if you don’t absolutely love them. Certain conditions and limitations apply to each product. Please refer to the Warranty Catalog for detailed information.
