Yes, You Need Winter Tires: All-Season vs. All-Weather, Top Rated Winter Tires, and More

0:00 Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this platform. If you're talking cars fan and want to see the Consumer Reports test track in person, here's your chance. On October 17th, Consumer Reports is hosting A5K run and walk fundraiser here at our auto test center in Colchester, Connecticut.

0:17 It's a fun way to get outside, see the cars we talk about every week, and support our mission all at once. And if you can't join us in person, there's a virtual option to go to cr.org/5k to learn more and register. Welcome back to Talking Cars. I'm Michael. Crossan. I'm Gordon Ginger. And I'm Ryan Pouliot Koski also known as the tire guys.

0:46 So I think that's what we're talking about this week. But we'll get into tires in a little bit. But it is that time of year. I'm in a hoodie. Ryan's ready to go to the beach, but, no. So winter is on the way. And there's a lot of things that, as vehicle owners and drivers that we should probably be doing, we need to do.

1:02 So want to talk about what are some of those things, get them, you know, fresh in our mind and, well, eventually we'll get to tires. That's why we have the tire guys here. And for the people listening, they may be getting ready to buy tires or thinking about, do they need winter tires? So we'll get into that here, too.

1:15 Lots of, I think. Good winter info coming up. So what are some of the things you guys do to prep your vehicles for winter time? So, yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I mean, you should always you should be constantly checking on your car. Checking your tires once a month, for age cracks, all that kind of stuff.

1:29 Tread depth. But, you know, you're coming out of summer. You might want to get the beach chairs out and put the snow brush back in. That kind of stuff, you know, check your fluids. I mean, make sure your batteries up to snuff. Batteries don't like the cold. You know, all that kind of stuff because you, you know, you're you're going to be making trips up north or, you're just commuting in the snow to work.

1:48 Last thing you want to do is run into, you know, issues with your car, it or what can you tell us about cold temperatures and tire pressures? Yeah. So you're going to lose tire pressure as the temperature goes down. It's about one psi for every ten degrees, give or take. So, you know, if you are, last time you filled your tires, it was 90 degrees in the summertime.

2:12 It's averages maybe 20 degrees in your area. You know, you could be down potentially 6 or 7 psi. And all the. Sorry. All the while. Well, through those temperature changes, tires are just losing air anyway. Air does bring it through the wrong time. And I mean, from being a former dealership technician, that first cold morning, our whole service lane would be full of people with the tire pressure light on.

2:34 You know, everyone's now running late for work, and they got to get the car checked and the techs aren't making any money because we're all just resetting tire pressure lights so you can save yourself quite a lot of hassle by checking them monthly. But when that temperature does swing, you know, from the 90 degrees summertime, send them cold on a cold morning and theoretically should be good at least as a baseline for the winter. Right.

2:52 And you can save yourself that annoying light, you know, checking for leaks or having to go to a tire shop or dealer. Right. Save a lot of time. And you want to be mindful. You want to use the pressure that's, in the, the doorjamb has a placard in the doorjamb or in the owner's manual. Don't go by the max pressure on the sidewalk.

3:07 That's meant for max load, right? So it's for the tires physically capable of holding that pressure. Right? But the car is not designed to ride at that pressure. Right. And it translates to a lot of things. I mean, the car was designed with those tires and that size, the contact patch, the area of the rubber that's touching the road, at a certain pressure is the proper size to maximize the handling, all the, performance aspects of those tires.

3:29 So if you put too much air in them, you actually shrink that contact patch or to low to there too low that it gets bigger. But you also, run into heat issues because the tires are deformed, you know, deforming and reforming. A lot more so that rubber tires basically just stretching all the time is around.

3:44 You're building up heat that's no good or low tires is very bad. But, overinflated is not really that good. So, is anything else you guys do specifically for winter? I've got a couple that I'm thinking of that I do, at least on my own vehicles. I mean, you mentioned the snow brush. Make sure your winch washer fluid is full, but also, there are like, summer formulas for.

4:00 Or if you live in a place, it's really cold. They have some that are like the extra winter formula that are, basically stay liquid. They don't freeze at such a low temperature. And one thing that I've started doing in my own cars is carrying one extra wiper blade. It's like the old one that I took off, after a road trip in snow where the wiper blades started coming off the middle night, I couldn't find wiper blades, so I just throw like the good one in the trunk of the vehicle.

4:22 I have one as a backup. Yeah, exactly. So, also, I mean, just safety wise, I mean, you might want to make sure, you know, you have some, even your roadside flares, like, all your safety stuff. Make sure you have all the stuff for a spare tire if you have it. Yeah. So make sure gloves, make blanket, cell phone charger, stuff like.

4:39 Right. Yeah. Because I mean, you know, we're we get winter here in Connecticut, but it's not the harshest of winters are certainly places that experience more winter than us. And, you know, if you live in one of those places, you might actually be a little bit more of an expert on cold weather than we are, because, you know, we do get winter, but we sometimes have mild winters and we sometimes have worse winters, right?

4:57 But in general, you know, cars are machines and they like to operate within temperature ranges. You know, that's certainly within most of what we see, at least in, continental US for temperature extremes and things like that. And because we have the tire guys, I think it's a good sort of transition into tires.

5:11 If you're looking at your tires and you're wondering, do you need tires? And maybe I should do something before winter, that's not a bad time to do it, right? Because you kind of need most available traction, you know, in the wintertime in New England, this is a popular time of the year to, look at your tires, assess whether you, need new ones or not.

5:28 You know, check your Ted tread depth. You know, if you're getting down to for 30s, you should be looking at, buying tires. You know, you can buy a little tread gauge for cheap, or you can use a quarter, flip a quarter over the gap between, the top edge of the quarter and the top of, George Washington's head of about four 30s.

5:46 And then a penny. It's two 30s from Lincoln's head to the edge of the two 30s. You're done those tires and then, like, two 30s is like the legal sort of tread limit, right? Yeah, in many states. And, I mean, you hit a puddle or you hit some snow with that, you're going to you're gonna know right away on that.

6:00 You're worn down pretty good there. So you want to start shopping before then. So, that's that's important. And I think generally to if you're thinking you know, do I need to do this? The answer might be yes. So get it checked out. And whether you know you're capable of doing it, you know, you go to Amazon, buy the tread gauge or you fish around, you know, in the jar on your desk for some coins.

6:19 Or you can probably swing through most tire shops or most shops, and someone can just take a look. They have the tools there real quick and can, you know, sort of get a reading and let you know. I'll keep in mind they are those places are in the business of selling tires. So you want to put eyes on them yourself?

6:33 I would think, too. Absolutely. Yeah. The idea here is kind of get ahead of the problems you want to you want to fix them before they become problems. So you don't want to wait for that first morning when there's four inches of snow on the ground and be like, oh, I got ball tires. I should have done that. Yes.

6:46 Yeah, exactly. Just like you don't want to your car started to crank slow in the fall time. You don't want to wait until it's 15 degrees out in the car. Won't start. To just get ahead on all this stuff. Yeah, I we've talked about this quite a bit over the years, but, you know, when it comes to shopping and, you know, you identify you you do need tires, right?

7:05 Do some do some research, use us, use our ratings, do some research, figure out what you want. And then call ahead. Talk to them ahead of time. The last thing you want to do is walk into a car dealer. Tire dealer? You know, tire shop in the middle of the rush when the first snowflake flies and everybody's in line.

7:23 And listen, a tire shop can only hold so many. They can only stock so many tires in the building. And a lot of times they are a they're a dealer for a certain brand. So they have those brands, and they have a lot of those tires and they're going to push those on you. And they might not be the greatest choice for you.

7:35 So, sometimes you get this like kind of your good, better best, right. And people don't know. So like, oh whatever, I'll take the better ones or the cheapest one because I don't want to spend money. But if you go into it educated knowing, like, hey, I want these or, you know, two options that I might want, you call them ahead of time.

7:50 They'll often they will. Very often they'll match online prices. And then give you throw in some like extra rotations or whatever. Free mountain balance. Getting rid of tires cost money too. So, just knowing all that ahead of time is huge because you don't go in there and then you're, you know, flustered because you don't know what to buy or, you know, what?

8:09 If it's the right price or not, you have some basis of, you know, where I should be, roughly, and you can set an appointment to so you're not on kind of their schedule. You can do it in time. That's convenient. Yeah. You're not first in on Saturday morning while everyone's trying to do it. So you got to do a little time.

8:21 We call it a bunch of places. You can order tires on tire rack and send them to a recommended dealer. But I called it. They called me. I called many times. I want these tires and boom, boom, and a couple days later, they call me back, made an appointment. I went there and and and I had them put on, and the prices were competitive.

8:39 So calling ahead is definitely. That's that's the best. Yeah. Particular. Excuse me, particularly if you want a certain type of tire. Yeah, sure. Because, to rise point, they're not going to stock those if you're checking our ratings and there's something on the top of the list that you want to get, there's a good chance that there's a chance that they might stock them.

8:56 But there's no guarantee, particularly if you're getting into some sort of specialty tire. So we're talking I know we're talking winter tires, but some sort of special summer tire, a winter product, maybe an all weather tire. Sure. And these are things that we're all going to get into. But, and. Don't forget to size is another variable, so. Correct.

9:13 They have, you know, they might have ten different models, but they also they can't carry hundreds of sizes that probably have a lot of 220 fives. But if you need a 265, but there are some oddball sizes out there that you know, and they might not have them. Absolutely. And, you know, I think to everyone, things like you said, there's limited stock that all these places, they have a lot of tires, but there's tire distribution warehouses locally where they can get tires same day next day, but they still have a lot of tires that they see in the area.

9:36 So if it is an oddball tire, you definitely want to plan ahead. So you're not stuck or you're not having someone maybe try to convince you to put the wrong tire, the wrong size, the wrong load or speed rating on the vehicle. Yeah, you definitely don't want to do that. That's important. But you always want to stick with the same speed rating.

9:49 Or higher end, same size tire, same type of tire as well too. Just back, going back for a second, a winter tires. If you're in an area where you're going to, you know, and you want to buy winter tires, winter tires, they manufacturer to build a bunch of them for the year, and then they sell them and they go away.

10:04 The inventory will or, sure will wane eventually. So you got to get you want to get on that or they probably don't build them in the winter for that winter. They're they're looking ahead. They built them. They're already on shelves probably right now. So you you want to get ahead of that because when they're gone, they're gone.

10:18 And I mean, you, you'll always be able to get something maybe, but not what you want necessarily. You might have to pay more premium. Yeah. To get the tires. So that's a that's important to know because they're very real season tires I mean they're constantly making them and they're, you know. Right.

10:30 Being distributed more evenly. So that's something to pay attention to. Are there any other considerations either when shopping or maybe having them installed? Is the is the process to to mountain balance the winter tire the same as like a regular all season for them? For the most part, the one thing you got to think about some winter tires are directional.

10:46 Okay. So if you're going to do any sort of rotation, it might not be the, the cross pattern that you're used to. It might only be forward, backwards. There's also the, what kind of rim you want to put it on. You're going to pay it if you want him round the same set of rims all year round. So that's fine.

11:03 But you're you're going to have to pay for mountain balancing when you switch. Right? Right. All season tire winter, I think the best option and I think Ryan would agree, is that just buy a separate set of rims. Yeah, definitely the trouble with just mounting and mounting and just mounting is mounting is actually is more gentle on the tire.

11:20 Dismounting is more dangerous. You need to rip a bead. Even in a skilled person, I mount it and it's not a doubt. Yeah, I've done it too well. And I, you know, I rip a little bit of a bead on the inside, and, you know, want to do that because you want to keep using this tire. So it's safer. You just mount them and you leave them on those wheels until you're done with them.

11:36 And then you, you know, when you take them off, when they're done. So it's kind of nice to, you can keep the, the alloys on the car in better condition. They're not out in the snow in the salt and all that kind of stuff throughout the winter. And you can, you know, depending on the situation and you can go you can go down, you can, down on a rim size chain, you can change the size, the tire, when you go to a winter tire, from like an 18 inch wheel, do like a 17 year old tires little cheaper.

11:57 You just have to make sure you maintain the same proportions and, load and everything like that speed, to be riding stuff. But, most winter tires are going to have a lower speed rating anyway because it is colder and you're should you should be traveling a lot slower speed. That's why I your tire speed ratings you'll see, are always usually usually pretty lower than your regular.

12:13 Make sense right. You want to allow more following distance. It could be slippery so it takes longer to stop. So just slow down anyway. Right. And is there thing we do about the noise of winter tires just that, that highway hum? Or is that just sort of how they are? I don't know. Some of them don't. Yeah, that some do, some don't.

12:29 And that's comes out in our testing. I mean, we've, we've seen many tires that are pretty darn quiet. Any tire as it wears. If you don't rotate them, they can start to make noise because they start to develop a, you know, wear pattern on them. But I mean, yeah. Kind of across. It's hard to make generalizations by category for just because we find there's, you know, all terrains.

12:48 For example, they're known for being noisier than, highway all season truck tires. But that's not always the case. There are some quiet All-Terrain tires that are just as quiet, if not quieter, than many regular truck all season tires. Yeah, same thing applies for snow tires, right? I just think if you're going to make a generalization, it's just that a snow tire does not handle as well as an all season does, right on dry or clear roads.

13:14 So Gord, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I think we should make this clear that there are different kinds of tires. And, Ryan, can you walk us through what those are and how we might know just by looking at them? Sure. So, Yeah, for the most common tire you're going to see on, most cars today is just an all season tire.

13:30 This is sort of like a Swiss Army knife of tires. It does everything pretty good, but it's not specialized in one area. Right? Then you have, you know, you know, winter tires. They're designed to go through snow and ice, and they do that very well. What they don't do very well. Stop. On dry and wet roads as well, or handle as well.

13:47 The snow tires have a soft, soft tread compound. They're typically a little deeper to, to in that compound. Supposed to keep the rubber, pliable and cold. Cold temperatures. Right. So they're specific for that. You put them on in the fall, you take them off in the spring. You do not want to drive them in the middle of the summer.

14:03 Then their summer tires. The other end of the spectrum, these are tires designed for, well, summer, dry condition, dry and wet. Not nothing below 40, 45 degrees. Because the rubber wheel gets hard and it doesn't want to grip, those tires are you typically find them on sports cars or even a lot of aftermarket application people, short summer tires for sporty stuff.

14:24 And then there's in the middle of all this more recent category, all weather tires, now in all weather tires, basically, you think of it as an all season tire, with enhanced snow traction. So it's fitting between winter tires and all season tires. It has they'll carry the same symbol, three peak mountain snowflake symbol that a snow day carries.

14:42 But, it carries that symbol, meaning it passes an industry standard test, but also has u t QG rating from the government, meaning they can be driven on year round. So it has a traction temperature and tread water rating on it. So those tires are great for people who need a little bit of snow traction but don't want to, you know, if you have an extra set of snow tires for your car, you have a story somewhere.

15:02 You have to swap them on and off. They're awesome in the snow, but they're extra in some areas, like here. If you don't need to drive in the snow and you can wait a couple of hours, and, or you take occasional trip up north, all weather tires. Great. You can leave it on year round. If you look at our ratings, they do.

15:17 They run the whole list. I mean, there's some at the very top, there's some middle and there's some at the bottom. So they very competitive tires in that category. So those are a great option for people that don't want to have an extra set of wheels sliding around. And our data shows they are superior than all seasons in the winter, you know, snow, snow and ice traction.

15:35 Not as good as winter tires, but better than all seasons. And they still hold their own, in most categories for, the other three seasons. So as someone who has had the wrong tire on the car for the weather situation more than once, I'm a ashamed to admit, you know, I was in North Carolina and it snowed, and I had summers on a car, a rear wheel drive car.

15:55 I made it to work. It was sketchy. I don't recommend it. But if you live in one of these sort of in-between zones, we don't really expect snow. But maybe does snow like, Florida can get snow or Texas can get snow once in a while? Well, what does driver and a buyer do? Yeah, I think the best thing to do is to stick with an all season tire.

16:11 Just like any, any if there's any chance that there's going to be cold weather, stay away from a summer tire. Really, summer tires are meant for really top tier performance on on dry pavement, dry and wet pavement. But they they're they're not meant for even even cool weather. Really cool. So yeah. So in that case I would stick with an all season tire.

16:33 You don't need to go to a dedicated winter tire unless you're doing a lot of driving on snowy year. Icy roads. I would say a lot of places in New England, even in the Midwest, a good all season or all weather tire would probably be a better choice than switching over to a dedicated winter tire, unless you really do have to drive in the snow.

16:51 I guess I would add too. I mean a good tire that's still in good shape. You know, it's a tire. There's that 100,000 miles. That was once a good tire. And is now like at or past its life, right? Yeah, definitely. I mean any we I would say this any, any tire that's new is is going to be better than a worn out tire.

17:07 I think that takes us back to, to the beginning about just doing some periodic maintenance, checking your tire pressures, looking to tread depth, you know, looking for bulges in the sidewall. Did you hit anything? Stuff like that. Because the roads are rough place. Yeah. These tires take the brunt of all of that. Yeah.

17:19 And your your car also, the only four points of the car that touch the road are the tires. So as you can have a $100,000 car with all the safety systems, but it's useless that it doesn't have tires that can, you know, grip the road underneath that. So, that's that's huge. So paying attention to your tires of all the where all that stuff is, is, is paramount and at the, at my expense here, I'm gonna ask another question.

17:43 I again, once had a rear wheel drive vehicle, that I live somewhere else and moved here with, and I got caught out in some tires that weren't the best of shape I was. I got to go buy some snow tires because I live on a hill and I couldn't get up the hill. I was cheap and bought two, put them on the rear so I had forward traction and I was like, forget the rest of the traction.

18:00 And I mean, I made it through was an ideal. Probably not. But like, should you do that? Definitely not. Yeah, yeah. We recommend putting all four tires on. Okay. The reason being but you alluded to it. Well, if you have a rear wheel drive and you put snow tires on the rear axle, well, that's great for getting up to speed.

18:17 But, you know, the front tires do a lot of the stopping and turning, which I would argue is probably more important than acceleration. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you definitely I go with all four tires. And if let's just say the budget was a concern, would I really been better off just getting new rear tires that match the front because the fronts weren't totally worn out?

18:34 This car maybe I've done some a little tire spins once in a while that accelerated the way or those rear tires. So I would have been better off just matching that all season to the front, but still in decent shape. Yeah, assuming you're not doing a lot of snow driving, that probably would have been your best option.

18:46 Okay, always good to know right? Because I mean tires are expensive. Yeah. And especially now you got extra set of wheels and maybe another set of tire pressure sensors and you're having to either do it yourself or take it down somewhere and transport and store all this stuff for all tires. You really want to replace them in sets of four?

19:01 Yeah, that's and that's easy to do. If you rotate them regularly. You rotate your tires every 5 to 8000 miles, the wear more evenly, because they're seeing different positions on the car. And then when they're worn out nice and evenly, then you'd replace all the setup for some people, get into the situation where you're buying two at a time.

19:17 And I understand, you know, for money purposes and whatnot, people can do that. But ideally you replace all four at once. Yeah, particularly if you have, all wheel drive certain companies, I believe Audi and Subaru, maybe you have them. You got to make sure that the tires are symmetrically worn. You can. Yeah, it's probably a differentials.

19:36 Yeah. The in the owner's manual will tell you sort of what the deviation from tire tire is. But it can cause transfer case problems. Differential problems. Just because the circumference of the tire is different. And when you're going down the road, they're all traveling at different speeds. So like your diffs are working overtime basically to compensate for that builds up a lot of heat.

19:52 You know, and you will see that. So that is a good point to bring up. And I get you, if you're one of those cars, it can be frustrating because it's like that tire looks still pretty good. But you know, not just go ahead and buy for, you know, don't do what I did. I'm always usually a lesson in what not to do on a car.

20:05 There are some rare situations where you can actually, you know, you could buy a tire and have it shaved down so that it matches a little bit closer. You know, that hurts. You buy a brand new tire. Now we're saving it down. But that's probably that might be better than buying all four. So Yeah, that'd be like a situation where you have a blowout, a catastrophic blowout.

20:22 You might need to go replace those tires instead of buying for sure. But in your situation, you have four is the best. If not, stick with all seasons. So I remember last winter, you guys were out there, a couple of Subarus, and I got roped into it. I might have volunteered, to drive a camera car because we've got some really cool footage of you guys testing tires.

20:40 I think you even did, like, a winter versus all season on a similar car. You just kind of run us through some of the process of testing these winter tires. Yeah. So, you know, our tire testing is separate from what we did that day. That was that was sort of an all wheel drive evaluation allowing us to see the differences, with all wheel drive and different types of tires on those vehicles.

20:59 But our regular, our our no tire. I'm sorry. Our tire testing snow traction test is a 5 to 20 mile per hour, acceleration on a packed snow surface. So think of a, you know, a road that's been traveled on with snow and it's packed a little bit loose stuff on top. We prepare a surface like that, and then we're celebrating with best effort, acceleration up to 20mph.

21:20 And the idea is, measuring the the distance required to get to 20, the, the the idea is that the tire that has more traction, we'll get to 20mph in a shorter distance. So has more traction, on snow. So and that's sort of we turn off stability control and we're just kind of giving it our best effort, letting the tire spin.

21:37 And we, you know, we're collecting some data to see how quick the tire can get to 20mph. So what do you do? That test? I mean, it's pretty glaring. I mean, where tire just goes right down. No problem. You go to turn around, the car turns around. No problem. We get on an all season set. That's not so great.

21:51 And it taken you some distance, and then you got to turn around and understeer on you. And. Yeah, I know, yeah, it's very evident. We did the filming. You know, I was very aware once you switched over to the all seasons because the camera car was pretty close to the car that you were driving and sort of being aware that you are sort of driving towards me on a tire that doesn't have as much snow grip.

22:09 Right. And then, I want to just I want to just sort of commend you guys because Gordon took me out there with a truck, and I think it had all seasons on it, and I actually tried to do the testing that you guys do. I think I did ten runs in one of my ten runs would have been even in the realm of acceptable.

22:24 So, I mean, it's quite the feat of just this, this over and over acceleration on a super slippery surface. And also, you guys can feel these mini differences. You're tired of tire along with the test equipment, things like that. So I know it takes some time experience doing it for sure. But the key is having a nice level playing field for all the tires.

22:40 So we test at night, so there's no sun load because the sun can affect the snow temperatures, and the moisture in the snow, you know, we put the tires outside before we mount them on the car so that they're already acclimated to the, outdoor temperatures, because the rubber can get harder in the cold temperatures.

22:55 And that that adjusts, the pressures as well. So, so we're paying attention to all those little things, to make sure that they all experience. We were even, picking all the little pebbles out of all the little. Yeah. Because we drive these tires have be driven on the road prior, so there's probably rocks and stuff.

23:07 Yeah. Pull those out especially for ice testing because that's, that could actually acted like a little stuttery. Well, but, yeah. So it's a, it's a, not an easy test to do, but, it's a real world test that people, it's, you know, when people buy a snow tire and it does really well in the snow, they go, wow, this is amazing.

23:26 And our testing can really show you that, like, snow tires are almost like life changing the first time you drive. Yeah. I'd say owner satisfaction with a winter tire is really high because we bought it to do one thing and go through snow, and they do that. But when you can just design something to do one thing, you better do that, that you know, you can let the other stuff go.

23:44 It doesn't have to really do that is great for the other stuff. And tires are a compromise. You know, if you focus on one thing, it's going to you're going to lose some of the other aspects. But Winter tire, you can do that because it's only going to be driven on in the winter. So Gordon Ryan just mentioned, ice testing.

23:56 And I've seen how you guys do this. I know we have some footage of this on. Bring it up so we can, you know, show it to the people at home. But talk about, like, on snow is difficult. But now you guys are on ice, and it's like sheet ice. How do you manage that? Yeah. So we're at a local ice skating rink.

24:11 And we're doing a ten mile an hour, two zero braking test. And the idea it's kind of similar to the snow traction is, you know, the tire that starts the shortest distance on this ice, it's going to have better traction all around in winter. But we find that there's a good correlation between the snow traction and traction, generally speaking.

24:34 The the thing with this test is, you have to get up to speed and stop in an ice rink, and, that ice rink is really small, especially winter and a half ton pickup or. Or you, because you do a variety of different cars, you might do pick ups, sedans, sports cars. So you might be trying to do something like a rear wheel drive vehicle, I would assume.

24:53 Yeah. Yeah. We've done it with a, Toyota Gr86. We'll actually take off in second gear because the, the limited torque in second versus first gear is easier to take off. It's, it's it takes a little bit and that the backboard comes up really quick. The first couple. Are so many people want to know how have either of you guys tagged a backboard.

25:13 No no no. When I first started working here two years ago, we were doing it from 15mph and that was spooky. So we used to put a tire wall at the end of the road. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. You know, and I vaguely remember a few people maybe bumping it gently, but we don't anymore. But but since just 20 years ago, tires have gotten a lot better.

25:31 I mean, the compounds are a lot better. Some of these tires are even. All seasons are quite impressive on ice. It's sheer ice. It's, you know, it's it's not going to. None of them are gonna do great because it's. Yeah, but there is a condition you might encounter in winter tires on that surface is glaring again.

25:45 They these tires are designed for that. And it's really super satisfying to see. And then something that I've learned, you know, we test cars, but you guys test tires. We're testing cars. We want a really good asphalt surface most of the time. So we have, you know, brake lanes that we use for testing.

26:00 But you guys on the facility have your own brake lanes, though it was new asphalt, we actually did some work to kind of rough that asphalt up a little bit. And from what I've learned, sort of the worse the asphalt is, that's what separates the better tires. Like all tires are pretty good on like good new dry asphalt.

26:16 Yeah. So the tire testing you're kind of looking for, we're looking for the extremes in order to spread things out. So stopping on ice, it's something that you can encounter in the. Real world and certainly extreme. It is an extreme, but, by testing on, you know, glare ice, we're testing the worst case scenario for this car with the braking.

26:35 The reason we we've burnished the surface is we're trying to lower the friction, the idea being that maybe a either cheaper or a lower technology tire will do as good as a, as a good tire on a really grippy surface. When you start lowering the friction level on the surface, it spreads out. The result here, and it kind of separates the good from the bad tires.

26:57 Yeah, sure. Yeah. Like to work a little harder, I would assume. You know, you can just call out the things the tire doesn't do so well. Yeah. The truth is, I mean, the, the roads across this country vary drastically for sure, because the asphalt we use here comes from the local plant, and we have a lot of granite hard stone up here.

27:13 You can go across the country and they're using the softer, different type of stone, more round, blah blah blah. So our Moo values are, above the track. We use a, Connecticut dot recipe, so we use a asphalt that the date uses on, Connecticut roads. So we use that as well, but it's a higher moo value.

27:30 It's grippy, in other words. And also the track doesn't get driven on every day like a highway, so it doesn't get worn down as much as that wheel leaks on and stuff like that. So that bring that that Moo value down that Gordon was talking about to more realistic levels. Because we did this cover years ago.

27:45 Like if a really grippy wet surface tires, they they're all doing all they're all doing pretty well. Not great but pretty well. You start to lower them. You value if you were to really pull apart the tires that have more technology for that. And that's what we wanted to see. So, it was it was sort of an effort to be more real world to.

28:03 Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes sense. I mean, like when we test cars, we don't want to evaluate ride on the smoothest road possible. You need it on rough road to see how the car handles it. So, Yeah. No, it all makes sense. I think if we had to take away from this, would it really be that tires are specific to circumstances and you pick the tire for the kind of driving activity that you do?

28:20 It's really the best, the best way to go about this. I've been saying that for a long time. It depends on your situation. You know, the snow tire thing, if you don't have to be at work and you can wait till the road's clear off or good, but also using maybe not. Whether tire is good depends on your situation.

28:33 If you have to be at work, you should, you know, your safety or I'm sorry, like a, first responder or. Yeah, doctor never got to be there. Yeah. So then maybe there's a, you know, an opportunity to, to do that, you know, by something like that. But everyone's situation different. You can live down south and not even care about snow traction.

28:49 Look for tires. Maybe somewhere on the list, I don't they might not do well in snow or ice traction, but you don't need that, right? Yeah. If, you know, it's very situational. You. I guess you think about, like, shoes too, right? Like, you know, there's different shoes for different activities. Yeah.

29:01 You don't go run a marathon and like, some steel toe, you know, insulated boots kind of thing. So, you know, pick the pick your shoe for your activity, pick your tire for the type of driving that you plan on doing. So in related to this ice testing, this question we get and I think we can see it in the video clips.

29:14 Tires and wheels are locked up. When you guys are testing on the ice. It doesn't appear to that the car has working ABS. What's going on with that? Yeah. So everyone who drives a car, this model now has ABS. They have electronic stability control, but unfortunately, when you're doing some testing, there's inconsistencies with some of those systems.

29:34 When you're trying to compare a tire to the tire. So for example, ABS, doesn't work that great under ten miles an hour on ice, we found out. So in order to separate the tires, we do a locked wheel test on the at the ice skating rink. Okay. Kind of similar situation goes for the snow acceleration. Everyone's using traction control.

29:54 We shut that off. Ryan and I are kind of acting as our own traction control. The difference is we're doing hundreds of runs. So we're kind of. We're trying to take away the vehicle and to separate out because you're. Really just interested in testing the tire, and no other kind of outside influence. Right.

30:08 Removing variables essentially. All right. Very cool. So going back to my questionable automotive choices with the wrong car, wrong wheel drive, wrong tire, wrong temperature. If I just went and bought an all wheel drive or even maybe a four wheel drive vehicle, can I just go rip around through all the kind of deep snow and over ice and do whatever I want?

30:26 You can, but, you might find yourself stuck in a ditch somewhere. Here's here's the thing with all wheel drive cars, you know, typically you just go out and bought an all wheel drive. Cars can probably have an all season tire on it. Whatever. You're going to get up and go, from our cameras, we've seen, like, you know, it's going to accelerate because you have all wheel drive, so a lot of forward traction.

30:45 Yeah. Now, now you're moving. You have this 4 or 5000 pound mass moving and you got up to speed kind of easily because has all wheel drive. But now once you're moving, you kind of forgot about that. And now you got to slow down a turn. You're coming down. You know, out of the out of a ski resort or something, and you get what you want.

31:02 You just the same for tires. All wheel drive doesn't help you steer. The tires had better be decent. Yeah. So I'm not going to remember testing way back in the day. We, you know, we tested like an Acura RSX front wheel drive, made snow tires on it. And, you know, you take off the tire, spend a little bit.

31:19 Oh, wow. It's slippery. Okay. But then you're more cautious while you're driving. But you can stop. You can turn, you know, I can tell you how many times I see this big Range Rovers as fancy SUVs and they're off in the ditch. In a snow snowstorm because they got the speed pretty easily. Yeah, but now this thing's floating on the snow, these big tires and all this stuff, and they're not probably the proper tires, or they're half worn and off the side of the road they go, and meanwhile you see this little front wheel drive car with snow tires and I just scooting right up the highway. No problem.

31:44 In control. So, all wheel drive is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but it can be a false sense of security at times, because it always comes back to tires that are on the car because you you still have four tires. They're going to stop you in turn. So you need to make sure the tires are up to snuff because all wheel drive, can actually get you in a little bit of a trouble in a little bit of trouble if you're not paying attention to that kind of stuff.

32:04 I mean, the laws of physics still apply. Yeah. You know, once it's objects in motion, it's going to stay and you get help in one direction. Really. Right. So it's just good to keep that in mind. While you, you know, I have that. And again, all wheel drive is good. It's a great thing, but it's, you know, you it can be a false sense of security sometimes in really slippery condition.

32:21 And so, Gordon, you know, I was I call you guys tire guys because you're a tire guys. But you drive our fleet of test cars as well. And you participate in driving those and testing those or anything like that. So we have this fleet of 75 cars, give or take. And I think this might be interesting for a little behind the scenes for people, you know, what's sort of our philosophy on these tires?

32:39 Most of our cars do come with all seasons, but every once in a while we do get a car with summers on it. Whether it's. And sometimes you can all wheel drive karma with that all seasons. And one of the electric Mercedes had them. So how do we manage that? Because it's Connecticut. We get winter, you know. What do we do.

32:53 Just kind of give people an idea. So typically if it's kind of a, a normal sedan touring car, if it came with some sort of summer tires, which I. Don't think it's rare, but every once in a while. We try and keep those cars off the road, completely in the winter. So as we, Marcum, do not drive and they don't go out.

33:10 Okay. How many times I, you know, paying Big John about like, oh, this one got snow summer tires on it. So like, once, you know, November or December, it's because it's not even just a snow. The actual raw snow traction. Yeah. It's they they don't they don't they don't grip well under like 45, 40 to 45 degrees.

33:27 They turn into almost like plastic. Yeah. Like a, like a big wheel kind of tire. They can just spin it. Did I mean sorry, we did have I can remember having, some Range Rover sports back in the day that had summer tires on them from the factory. And it's like they don't they didn't look necessarily, but they were.

33:42 And it was like, that's the potential for that. You know, false sense of security right there. Yeah. So so we choose to park those cars, you know when to let them go out on the road. But then we just stick with, with all seasons basically on everything else. And I will say we had a couple of Mercedes that had, one was like a summer tire, almost like a European three season weird thing.

34:00 Yeah, yeah, we did put a set of all weather tires, a because the tires were tough to get, and we kind of wanted to use the car because they were all wheel drive cars. And once the leaves do in the winter, so again, for the, for the people that maybe have some winter in their life, but they don't want to commit to a full winter tire.

34:17 These, these all weather tires seem to be pretty good. And I know, Andrew, who's a video guy he mentioned. Right. We started this, that he has 78,000 miles on a set of, I think, all weather tires, 78,000 miles on, on a Mazda. So I recommended those to you can imagine who maybe he reads Consumer Reports thought.

34:37 No. Well, so that was so that was a situation, where they used to use, winter tires. And we don't get snow quite like we used to. And I think there, there needs to get to work weren't quite the same. But now the all weather tire fits in there perfectly because it stays on the car and not to worry about snow, if they need to drive in it, but, Yeah, sure.

34:57 And, this is where you guys give out your emails, right? So when people have started questions, they go directly to, you know, just kidding. We won't put that work load on you. You have lots of questions. In an era of AI generated answers, it's important to know who you can trust. Asker and tap into thousands of product ratings.

35:13 Safety investigations. And expert advice. But I think, speaking of questions, we always take questions from our audience and for the viewer and listener if they want to get their question answered by some of us here, it's going to be talking cars@consumer.org is the email address to use. And if your question gets selected by Dave and ends up on the podcast, Dave will send you a shirt, a hat, some kind of gift, swag, stuff like that.

35:35 And again, he doesn't send them out. He has someone who does that for him. So it's not coming directly from Dave, but it's coming from Dave, at least in spirit. So, send us those emails and, we love to, to answer and entertain questions. So this week's question is, from Derek from Denver, Colorado. And Derek says, as a courier and rideshare driver, I drive extensively in need.

35:56 New winter tires for my 2009 and 2015 Toyota Priuses PRI. Because of the unique traction laws in Colorado, only winter tires will do change too. Of course, I'm considering storable tires this year and wonder if getting studs increases tread wear compared to just using the same tire model without studs installed on the one hand, they're metal, not rubber.

36:18 On the other hand, the metal is talking the rubber. Could you check with one of the big brains around us here, like Ryan, to see what the data says? So big brain Ryan. Oh, what do we say? Because we did not talk about studs anywhere, sort of in this winter tire extravaganza. Yeah. So I, we did, some years back, we did a little, stud studded snow tire evaluation, and we tested saddle balls, snow tires.

36:43 I actually started we have a stud gun, by the way. It's kind of neat, actually. Like, pulls the rubber part and pops a stud inside the. I actually want to check that. I've never done that. Neat. Yeah. So a snow tire will have these little pockets in it that you can put a stud in. Sometimes you buy from the factory that already have the studs in them.

36:58 So, studs, it's what you think. It's a loose little metal, and they have a little carbide tip, and they are some mechanical traction. These things will grab ice, and grip it. And they do work on ice. Our testing showed those snow. Traction wise, it was no different, than a regular, a good, stud list, no tire.

37:19 Now, there's a lot to this because you can, if you grind through the snow and you hit an asphalt surface with the studs, you're going to grab the surface, right? They also ruin the surface. So which is why studs are, you know, you have to take them off, and they're illegal in many areas. You know, outside of this, snow window, if you will.

37:37 But our testing showed even on ice, they stopped better. But it wasn't as earth shattering as we thought. A really good Douglas, winter tire with a good compound stop on ice. Really? Well, these days, it started. Snow tires are loud. And then they. And they do, like, a little wrap up your driveway. They did the destructive because the carbide tips a hard piece of metal.

37:57 Right. And answer his question. No, you're not going. They're not going to last longer because the rubber is still meeting the road. And a lot of the studs, actually have there's, like, almost like a little, air pocket behind them and, and even into the tire soft, the stud pushes in a little bit. So it's just making pressure contact.

38:12 And there's a little bit of pressure as it's rolling. Like right at the surface kind of level. Yeah. Yeah I mean I think Nokia has a technology where there's actually like an air pocket and it kind of retracts a little bit and to make them less aggressive, if you will. But they still have the bite on the snow on the ice.

38:27 Studded snow tires are for folks living, like in the Arctic Circle or somewhere real aggressive in Finland, somewhere where you're just on icy snow roads and all the time around here, I really I mean, you'll see them up in northern Vermont, Canada and places, but, I, I don't, I don't think it's you can get away with just by a good set of, studies, winter tires, and you'll be okay.

38:44 And again, this comes out, I think the use case. Right. Like, if you happen to have a long, like, incline of a driveway in a shaded and always has ice on it. Yeah, it might be worth investing in that. So you can get your car up your driveway. And they do work, in that sense. But, you see, less and less of that is no tires, especially around here.

39:00 I mean, back in the day, they were always around because we didn't have a compounding. So they relied on mechanical traction like nuts. Right. So now the soft, the rubber stays soft. And there's so many sipes a little slits in the rubber. And they just they, they make really good snow tires or instead of wool ones are like just not as popular.

39:15 So cool. And Derek also mentioned, snow chains and Gordon, you strike me as a fellow who's maybe used a set of snow chains once or twice. Yeah. So kind of similar to the studs, really. The snow chains are for really specific scenarios. I mean, if you're if you're stuck, if you really need to get through.

39:30 I know in Colorado they have certain laws where to go through certain mountain passes. You have to have these chains. It's not something the common everyday person is going. To just like go to the grocery store with some snow on the ground is probably not where you want to be, right? Just so you know, snow tires are already kind of a specialty product.

39:47 And then start of all snow tires are even more of a specialty. And then snow chains is really for a particular use. I have some I have personal experience with snow chains actually just going out west, snowboarding and, some of the mountain passes they make you, we rent a car and it has all season tires on it to come out of a regular area where there's no snow, and then you get up on the mountain.

40:05 So, and snow chain, putting a snow chain on is difficult, especially now you put it on when you are just before. It's just hopefully just before you encounter snow. But if you are in snow, they're difficult to put on. I mean, you're, you're laying this thing down on the, you're underneath the car, reaching around.

40:22 We even tested the snow socks. These, like, fabric material things that you wrap around a tire in a pinch to get you out. And they did work, but, we did some of that testing here years ago, but it's it's difficult to get in. You're freezing cold. You're laying in the snow trying to wrap this thing around.

40:36 You're better off just having a winter tire on the car if you're going to be in that kind of area. And, you know, a Prius with winter tires on it, you'd probably be surprised how well you're dealt with it. So and this might be a little inside baseball, but, when I was a teacher, I actually showed that video of you guys installing the tire socks on cars and and kind of different.

40:52 So that was a video I used in class one day. They're just they're difficult to put on. And for the average person, not my mind. I'm someone that's dealt with tires for a long time. And I knew what to do with it. And I was on a flat surface, not on the side of a busy highway. So I had the odds are in my favor and still is not fun.

41:08 So. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well great question, Derek. Thank you. Dave's got something in the mail already for you. I saw him back there, putting stamps on the envelope. So, I think that's going about do it for us this week on talking cards. But before we go, we do want to mention if you're watching on YouTube, there is a green fundraiser little icon next to the videos.

41:25 And what that means is, as a viewer, if you want to and are able to, you could donate something to us. We are a nonprofit and, you know, buying cars and testing tires, all that does add up. So, any help that we can get is certainly appreciated. And, some people do like to, to be able to donate and kind of participate in the work that we do.

41:40 So we do appreciate that. And, you know, as always, if you want to get your questions, send them to talking cars at consumers or that way, our big brain tire guys can answer those questions for you. So keep those coming. Check the show notes, all the kind of stuff we talked about. There's going to be, like links down there to tire ratings and the reviews and all that kind of stuff.

41:58 Add something you can. New truck tire readings, for this year are live on CRO. This is a big one for you. And, all the new. Yeah, the new truck, all season truck, all terrain and truck, winter tires. That Gord and I and Julian, tested this year, I hope to one evening. You. Did you help? Yeah, I was there every time I was there.

42:16 Everyone helps tires in some way at some point. Yeah. Appreciate everyone. But, yeah, those ratings are live. So check it out. Yeah, all those notes are down there. And, thank you guys for being on the show this week with us. And thank everyone for watching, listening. We'll talk cars with you next week.

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