13 comments

  • tlogan17 minutes ago
    The energy efficient tires have much longer wet braking distance. And they last less (for similar priced tires).<p>Anyway, saying how it will save money is not right way how to promote this (it is really hard to predict all 2nd order effects this might cause - including increase of accidents, noise pollution, market forces (less choice), and similar).
    • MBCook16 minutes ago
      Seems right to me.<p>So what is the right way then?
    • jp579 minutes ago
      This. My wife and I both thought the low-rolling-resistance tires on our hybrids felt very unsafe in the rain. My Audi A3-etron&#x27;s tires were also by far the least durable tires I have had on a car in my 40+ years of driving. I prematurely replaced or repaire more tires on that car in 8 years than on all the other cars I&#x27;ve had put together.<p>I eventually switched to a midsize truck, because I need to do some light towing sometimes, and my first thought was, <i>it feels so much safer in the rain</i>.
      • deaton2 minutes ago
        I had some Michelin Energy Savers on my Chevy Volt for a while. Got 25k miles out of them before they were toast. They were awful, noisy, no grip, and I didn&#x27;t realize how bad they were until I got some much better tires.
  • 3eb7988a166313 hours ago
    <p><pre><code> ...“designed to ensure that replacement tires sold in the state are at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold in the state as original equipment.” </code></pre> My nose for unintended consequences says manufacturers could start selling cars with worse tires to bring down the average.<p>That being said, the quoted figures do sound good. Maybe less compelling in someplace like Texas with very low gas prices:<p><pre><code> The energy commission calculated that more efficient tires cost between $6 and $26 more per set, but that increase is more than offset by reduced fuel consumption. It put net savings at $85 to $153 over the lifetime of the tire when gasoline is $4.60 a gallon, though the savings could be 25 percent higher with this year’s price spikes.</code></pre>
    • kube-system13 hours ago
      &gt; manufacturers could start selling cars with worse tires to bring down the average.<p>OEMs do the opposite already because their official MPG ratings are calculated using the OE tires. OE tires are sometimes criticized as prioritizing fuel economy too much at the expense of longevity and performance.<p>I don’t see a reason that a car manufacturer would be incentivized to help tire manufacturers sell the cheapest tires on the market
    • majormajor13 hours ago
      &gt; My nose for unintended consequences says manufacturers could start selling cars with worse tires to bring down the average.<p>They won&#x27;t want to do that because it&#x27;ll hurt their advertised mileage&#x2F;range.<p>This is aimed at the different incentives between selling tires to manufacturers (make sure mileage is good, balance that against raw cost) vs direct to consumers (up front cost is king).<p>There are doubtless still some potential loopholes that will be explored, though some of the most obvious (like reducing tread depth, mentioned here, appear to have been considered already: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roadandtrack.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a71509031&#x2F;california-tire-efficiency-program&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roadandtrack.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a71509031&#x2F;california-tire-...</a> ). It doesn&#x27;t appear to be <i>that</i> naive.<p>It&#x27;s also something that&#x27;s hard to find info on when shopping for tires, so more transparency should help consumers.
  • diggernet9 hours ago
    &quot;...adopt a replacement tire efficiency program “designed to ensure that replacement tires sold in the state are at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold in the state as original equipment on new passenger cars and light-duty trucks.” Replacement tires are those purchased by drivers to replace existing tires.&quot;<p>Tires are not car-specific. This sounds like you couldn&#x27;t just go out and buy some random tires, you could only buy tires that are designated for your specific vehicle. And that owners of two vehicles with the same size tires would have different allowed tire choices, depending on what their OEM tires were.<p>Put another way, is this saying you can&#x27;t buy wider than OEM tires, and that you can&#x27;t buy all-terrain tires for something that came with street tires?
    • winrid9 hours ago
      It&#x27;s &quot;on average&quot;, so no, you still can.<p>And what are they gonna do if you just go to the tire store and say I want X tires? So of course none of this will be enforced. It&#x27;s just to provide the little leaf indicator.
  • hooloovoo_zoo12 hours ago
    I’d be much more interested in particulate pollution limits for tires.
    • lukeify10 hours ago
      How much of this is a solvable problem, insofar to the best of my knowledge there is no fundamental workaround for the fact placing heavy objects moving fast on rough surfaces generates friction which leads to the erosion of surfaces?<p>I think particulate pollution would be an acceptable outcome if the tires themselves were biodegradable over 10+ years. But to my understanding the vulcanisation process that&#x27;s employed makes it impossible.
      • Drunk_Engineer11 minutes ago
        This company is working on a pollution capture device:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetyrecollective.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetyrecollective.com</a>
      • Schiendelman10 hours ago
        The real changes are to make them less toxic! There are a bunch of approaches to take there.
    • MBCook13 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • winrid9 hours ago
    Probably the weirdest thing about this is the state doing something that results in it getting less tax money. This was lobbied for by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
  • reenorap13 hours ago
    It cost me $1600 to change the 4 tires for my Tesla because they are “energy efficient” and matched my original tires. I do not want the tires for my other car to be this expensive. I don’t care about efficiency those tires are literally 4X the price of my other car a Honda.
    • bb1233 minutes ago
      I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s just because they are &quot;energy efficient&quot;. Teslas are heavy, powerful vehicles. The tires they need are usually rated for extra load (XL), and have a high speed rating (W&#x2F;Y). If you went for EV tyres they likely contain an acoustic lining too as road noise is more noticeable in one. Unclear if that&#x27;s really needed though. Either way it sounds like you went for premium tires which is probably the right choice for a ~400hp, 2 ton car.
    • kube-system13 hours ago
      My Honda’s energy efficient tires are cheap. Your Tesla tires are expensive because of their lower volume and high performance design. They have different compound and more durable construction to handle the weight and torque better, and have noise dampening inserts.<p>An energy efficient tire for a Honda is just a mid priced tire for a Honda, and probably cheaper to install because they likely use just a $0.50 rubber valve stem too.
      • hagbard_c7 hours ago
        They&#x27;re different, yes, but not <i>that</i> different from the others. The price difference mostly comes from the fact that those who can afford pricey EVs also can afford pricey EV tires and as such they&#x27;re priced the way they are. Once EVs come down in price to match or go below ICE-powered cars tire prices will go down as well.
    • danans10 hours ago
      The energy efficient tires for my Chevy EV are $800 for a set of 4. You&#x27;re paying the luxury car parts tax.
    • dawnerd13 hours ago
      Mine are really close to needing to be replaced and I’m not looking forward to the 1500+ it’ll cost. I’ve gone further than the est lifespan at least.
    • Melatonic11 hours ago
      Isnt that because it has crazy torque, AWD, and high weight?<p>Same thing with ebike tires vs normal bike tires
    • Eueudhsbsj3212 hours ago
      Are the wheels a weird size? What stopped you from replacing them with regular tires?
      • murderfs12 hours ago
        Not the OP, but for my EV, it was a combination of higher load rating because batteries are heavy, tread compound needing to be different (more expensive) because of high torque requirements, and rolling resistance and tire noise being much more important for EVs than ICE cars.
    • doctorpangloss12 hours ago
      most of a passenger car&#x27;s performance and handling is its tires
    • dzhiurgis10 hours ago
      1. Shop around, there are cheaper tyres with same specs<p>2. Yours probably have foam for silent operation<p>3. They also have higher load spec, lower rolling resistance, stronger sidewall<p>4. Most importantly, they are likely much wider than normal car tyre, since Tesla&#x27;s are quite high performing.
  • winrid12 hours ago
    TIL we have LED lightbulb rules but every bulb in home depot has terrible PWM that&#x27;s bad for your eyes.<p>Another 20 years and maybe the government will finally address that.<p>On the tires topic, I&#x27;m fine with this as long as they don&#x27;t ban the sale of anything. Let the consumer decide.
    • Schiendelman10 hours ago
      Can you get LED lightbulbs you like online?
      • benji-york1 minute ago
        Can you get (non-LED) lightbulbs you like online?<p>No. They are illegal.
      • winrid9 hours ago
        Yeah, the Philips EyeComfort Flicker Free bulbs. Which HD <i>used</i> to sell. Now it&#x27;s 90% a couple other brands.<p>The problem is landlords and normal people just go to home depot so every time I move it&#x27;s a giant replace bulbs fiasco (or even replacing fixtures).
  • OptionOfT12 hours ago
    Dual feeling about this.<p>Non-OEM tires are usually louder, because they trade in efficiency for noise.<p>OTOH I had a car that came with Michelin Super Ports and it was a much better ride on Michelin PS4S.
  • enahs-sf12 hours ago
    Looking forward to picking up new pilot sports in Nevada.
    • winrid12 hours ago
      Same. It seems like they will just give them one leaf marking and not outlaw them outright, though?
      • MBCook11 minutes ago
        Right. If they wanted to ban things this would basically ban all knobby tires too wouldn’t it?<p>This is a primarily a labeling law it seems so people don’t get accidentally screwed. Seems like a good idea to me.
  • burnt-resistor11 hours ago
    Typically, there&#x27;s a trade-off between rolling resistance&#x2F;energy efficiency and traction&#x2F;low noise. It&#x27;s very easy to make long-lasting, efficient tires that are unsafe. It&#x27;s difficult to make them both categories and quiet.<p>Maybe single occupancy personal vehicles are wasteful and mass transportation should be invested in rather than shaming individual into token behaviors compared to large-scale waste and consumption sources elsewhere in the economy?
  • gosub10013 hours ago
    I would like to see a rule added that requires embedding a uuid for each tire so if you litter it, or your trucking company loses a re-tread, the state can chase you down and bill you, even years later. Upon selling a vehicle or replacing tires, your name is taken off the liability list and transferred to the new owner or shop. The retreads alone cost the state quite a bit and are dangerous to remove from the traffic lanes.
    • Rebelgecko11 hours ago
      Do TPMSs have uuids? Although I suppose it would just be a matter of time until Flock tracks those too, if they don&#x27;t already
      • tzs48 minutes ago
        They have a 32 bit ID, assigned sequentially during manufacture, with no coordination among manufacturers to avoid overlap. There will certainly be collisions. Those can often be disambiguated though because there is almost no standardization of anything else about the transmission.<p>The closest thing to a standard is that most either operate in the 315 MHz band (which is mostly older ones in North America and Asia) or the 433 MHz band (there are restriction in Europe with the 315 MHz band). Most worldwide are now in the 433 MHz band. Tesla switched to using BLE, and others are starting to support that.<p>For the 433 MHz (and I&#x27;d guess 315 MHz) there is pretty much no standard beyond that. It is a lot like the situation in wireless weather sensors and other non-WiFi&#x2F;non-Bluetooth IoT devices.<p>Different manufacturers use different modulation (AM or FM), different ways to encode bits, and different packet structures.<p>These can definitely be tracked. I have an RPi with an RTL-SDR dongle that runs rtl_433 and logs the output. I pick up TPMS sensors from cars other than my own that are at least 18 meters away. This was using the small antenna that comes with many RTL-SDRs. I&#x27;ve now got a much better antenna that is picking up many more things on 433 MHz so probably am getting cars farther away now.<p>There was a study that explored this [1]. They put a network of 433 MHz sensors along roads and in parking lots. They captured 6 million packets from 20k cars. They found groups of IDs that came and went at the same time to fingerprint individual cars and were able to map out driver&#x27;s daily routines and commute schedules.<p>Note that unlike cameras and automatic license plate readers this requires no line of sight, so is much less bothered by heavy rain or fog or dirty plates.<p>Use a good antenna and you should be able to make this work at up to maybe 100 meters or if the cars are in concrete parking structure.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;networks.imdea.org&#x2F;your-cars-tire-sensors-could-be-used-to-track-you&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;networks.imdea.org&#x2F;your-cars-tire-sensors-could-be-u...</a>
        • MBCook10 minutes ago
          Aren’t they also removed when you get new tires, so you don’t have to replace them?
      • gosub1004 hours ago
        That would be too easy to remove. I&#x27;m thinking something like a tiny ribbon with a barcode embedded in the tread. Otherwise it would be trivial to cut the spigot (assuming that&#x27;s where the sensor is located)
        • shibapuppie4 hours ago
          The sensor is stuck to the inside of the wheel and can&#x27;t be removed without unmounting all 4 tires.
      • shibapuppie9 hours ago
        Yep! That&#x27;s how your car picks it&#x27;s own four tires out of a parking lot full of tires yelling their pressure.
    • hagbard_c6 hours ago
      Fine, but in that case the trucking companies should also be able to bill the state for all damage caused to their vehicles by badly maintained roads. Maybe every pothole should have an ID so that damage caused by it can be traced back and billed to the state responsible for managing that part of the road?<p>Better still, have rules about maintenance for both roads as well as vehicles, use regular (yearly, past-the-winter-season for roads) inspections and deal with those who do not abide by the rules by (for vehicles) denying road access until problems have been mitigated or (for roads) deductions in road taxes or something similar, something to make it costly for the state to evade their responsibility. Fines don&#x27;t work here since they&#x27;ll just increase taxes to pay them, they need to <i>lose funds</i> to at least the amount of what it would have cost to fix the problems.
      • gosub10040 minutes ago
        If the retread comes off from hitting a pothole, that&#x27;s an issue with the re-manufacturer.<p>I didn&#x27;t use the word &quot;fine&quot; - as in &quot;$500 fine for littering&quot;. I said &quot;bill you&quot;. If a DoT has to stop and collect a strip of retread then he should bill a proper rate for his time and resources. If a stack of tires is abandoned in the desert, they should be collected, disposed of properly, and send the bill to the owner. A uuid embedded in the tread would facilitate that.
  • throwitaway22213 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • protocolture13 hours ago
      So normal US background noise?
      • vibcdingenjoyer12 hours ago
        Not exactly. You can own fully automatic “machine guns” here, but you have to purchase an exorbitantly priced tax stamp. There are special triggers you can add to your AR-15 that allow full auto via legal loopholes. But they’re banned on a regular basis after the ATF catches wind. Your best chance at hearing a machine gun sound is at a car meet up where the young hoodlums have aggressive pop tunes (explosions bang and pop out of the exhaust) or at a shooting range that rents out actually fully automatic rifles.
  • matchbok313 hours ago
    What a silly law. If a tire is &quot;inefficient&quot; and therefore &quot;bad&quot;, why can&#x27;t California just ban the sale of them? Instead there will be a new government funded office and rating system with &quot;leaf&quot; icons that 95% of consumers will ignore completely.<p>Like all types of laws like this, the &quot;$1B&quot; claim will <i>never</i> be reviewed or judged to see how accurate it is. (It&#x27;s not, at all)
    • exabrial12 hours ago
      It&#x27;ll never get reviewed. They&#x27;ll distract them with something other piece of news.<p>And don&#x27;t be shocked if a bunch of California government officials bought a bunch of Goodyear stock right before this.
    • holgerschurig11 hours ago
      Because things aren&#x27;t as simple as you make up.<p>&quot;why can&#x27;t California just ban the sale of them&quot; -- because that infringes freedom too much? There are probably lots of special machines with tires (e.g. in construction, farming, mining) that absolutely need &quot;bad tyres&quot;. Because only they work, e.g. due to construction form or physical properties like maximum pressure.<p>If some armchair person now goes here and outright bans all tyres that don&#x27;t match some efficiency numbers ... then all of the users of such equipment will be punished. THAT would be an overreaching government action.<p>However, having some labels that indicate to those customers that care (and can care, because they don&#x27;t have to consider other constraints) is actually something that enlarges freedom. You get the info, you can act on it, but you&#x27;re still free to NOT act on it should the circumstances for that be okay. And ultimately it&#x27;s you that decides this, not some government authority.
      • matchbok34 hours ago
        So about 1% of a 1% of a market. Got it. All of the information about the tires is <i>already</i> available. There is no new information, just duplicated.<p>If a large number of consumers actually cared about their tires drag coefficient we wouldn&#x27;t be having this conversation, because a large number of consumers already cared about their tires drag coefficient. But nobody does and this law will not change anything.
        • MBCook9 minutes ago
          The fact that information is available somewhere is very different from making it available easily to the consumer right when they need it.<p>What possible argument is there against that?<p>Do you really think most consumers didn’t care? Or do you think most consumers don’t even know? Cause I’m willing to bet it’s number two.
    • kube-system13 hours ago
      &gt; If a tire is &quot;inefficient&quot; and therefore &quot;bad&quot;, why can&#x27;t California just ban the sale of them? Instead there will be a new government funded office and rating system<p>Isn’t it doing both?
    • SpicyLemonZest12 hours ago
      I understand how the article could make it sound like they&#x27;re doing some kind of complicated matching process, but what California is doing here is pretty close to just banning the sale of them. They&#x27;re establishing the rolling resistance coefficient as the state&#x27;s official measure of tire efficiency, attaching a leaf ranking to different ranges, and through 2031 phasing in maximum values which tires must meet to be sold.