How Many Miles Do the Tires Last?

See Tires!

Don't know if the images will work but I've posted pictures of all my original 19" tires on my 2014 Rex with 43000 miles. I was going to replace all of them even though the fronts had some miles left on them but I couldn't get the front replacement tires yet. So I only ended up replacing the rears. An odd thing was that I noticed the i3 handles differently now, more jittery than with all four used tires. Also the Dynamic stability control is kicking on in places along my commute where I had never seen it before, in fact I cannot recall ever seeing that DSC light come on ever. Anyone have any ideas about this and how it might relate to only replacing the rear tires?

Neil

Does not appear that the images are showing up. I posted them with Google pictures. Anyone know how to make this work?- thanks.
Seem to have gotten the link working. Sorry for all the spam...

Thanks!

Neil said:

See Tires!

. . . I've posted pictures of all my original 19" tires on my 2014 Rex with 43000 miles. . . .

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The driver side tire looks nearly bald yet I see you live in California. I thought they did annual safety inspections so I'm wondering how you got them to pass before?

Understand, I live in Huntsville AL and we don't have any safety inspection. The most they do is confirm the VIN when you register or sell it.

Bob Wilson

Even though the tread depth on the i3's tires isn't as deep as on some models, compared to almost slicks, that extra tread from a new tire will squirm more than the old one. Plus, it can take 200-300 miles to wear off the mold smoothness. You may notice a considerable difference after you get a few miles on them.

bwilson4web said:

Thanks!

Neil said:

See Tires!

. . . I've posted pictures of all my original 19" tires on my 2014 Rex with 43000 miles. . . .

Click to expand...

The driver side tire looks nearly bald yet I see you live in California. I thought they did annual safety inspections so I'm wondering how you got them to pass before?

Understand, I live in Huntsville AL and we don't have any safety inspection. The most they do is confirm the VIN when you register or sell it.

Bob Wilson

Click to expand...

Not aware of any annual safety inspections in California, I've certainly never run across them in almost 50 years of driving. There are some checks during smog tests but don't think they include safety checks with regard to something like tires, just pollution related things. You can get a fixit ticket for various things as well I believe and they may be related to safety. There may be some tire related regulations but I'm not sure of what they are.

Neil

Neil said:

Not aware of any annual safety inspections in California, I've certainly never run across them in almost 50 years of driving.
Neil

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If they implement them today, tomorrow 50% of the cars would be off the road :mrgreen:

steffi3 said:

i3rex from 08/ 2014. 35'000km = 22'000 miles. Winter tires 19", 155 completely used after the 3rd winter. Summer tires rear (19",175) not far away from the end perhaps another 1000 km. Front tires (19" 155) will last again some time. The winter tires are switched from front to rear every time. According my feeling the winter tires are quite soft lasting shorter than summer tires approx. 15'000 km. Both are Bridgestone.
Comparing to this my daughters Polo TSI drove 35'000 km on Michelin winter tires still 4 mm profile which is enough for this summer.

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Is that 35K for one set of tires alone, or both? Put another way, is your overall mileage 22K miles or something greater?

Neil said:

An odd thing was that I noticed the i3 handles differently now, more jittery than with all four used tires. Also the Dynamic stability control is kicking on in places along my commute where I had never seen it before, in fact I cannot recall ever seeing that DSC light come on ever.

Click to expand...

I was finally able to put on a set of new front tires and the problem with the DSC I talked about earlier after replacing only the rear tires has gone away. So apparently the mismatch of tire diameters with new tires on the rear and old tires on the front was enough to confuse the computer into thinking there are stability issues. Also the handling jitteriness I noted earlier has also gone away. Another thing I had noticed was the regen was turning off more often than usual as if I were in a sharper turn and this has also returned to normal.

The Moral of this story- the computer is calibrated for a known match of the tire diameters and if that's off, you'll notice some pretty weird stuff going on affecting the handling of the car, the regen and the DSC, so beware. Who'd have thought the car was so sensitive about this!

Neil

My first set of i3 REx rears was replaced at 32k miles. Front tyres are still fine at 35k miles now. They probably have another 4-5k miles in them.

New tyres at a local store are £134 each, all included.

The car compares the rotational rate of all tires...when they're different, it assumes the fast ones are slipping, and takes action. It knows when you're turning the steering wheel, so takes that into account, too, since the outer tire on the curve will be traveling further than the one on the inner arc.

I have has three i3's. In all cases the tires lasted about 15K miles. I do not drive crazily. I read the tire warranty that comes with the car (it's on a CD! Who has a CD drive anymore?). The warranty goes through a long legal discussion and then buried in the middle it says "There is no tread life waranty ".

I suspect this might be like the ink cartridge trick - you ship the car with cheap tire compounds and have to get new ones almost immediately. The new tires (same brand / size) seem to last longer. One could become cynical....