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by Robotbeat 1422 days ago
Because the car’s usefulness is much less if they get conventional car tires. Lower range is super annoying, so people just pay for the slightly more expensive low rolling resistance tires. They’re also the standard replacement tires.
3 comments

It really isn't that big of a deal to use more traditional tires either. The reduction in range only matters for edge case folks that really need the last 10%. It has also been harder during the supply chain crunch to get specific tires. We went to a more traditional winter tire on my wife's Tesla and it lost like 0.1 mi/kWh (it was averaging like 2.9-3.3 mi/kWh).
Low-rolling resistance tires suck in the wintery drizzle of the PNW, so our Nissan Leaf sports rubber that is a bit more sticky. If there's a difference in range, it's small enough that our measurements don't see it.
Can't speak for evs but I did the math on low rolling resistance tyres for our diesel last time I changed them, and over the lifetime of the tyre it was dubious whether it would pay for itself in fuel savings.