I need some advice. It's definitely time for new tires on my 2010 Prius II. One tire has a slow leak from a nail, and all (original equipment) are nearing the end of their useful life at nearly 38K miles, so I'll get a full new set. I drive in CT, so we can have ice and snow, wet roads, temps range from single digits to 100 degrees F, but mostly 20's to 80's. We don't drive aggressively. Less road noise would be nice but I can get used to anything. We put about 20K/yr on the Prius. I don't care if the ride is "firm". I've been through the low rolling resistance tire list, and just came away overwhelmed. The guy at Town Fair Tire says he can get me any tires, and will match the best price I can find. Any advice, Prius tire gurus?
I also live in the hartford ares of CT, my OEM tires have 46,500 on them, I think by this winter I will be changing my tires, do the research with in this forum, lost of great info, as far as Town Fair BE CAREFULL, they may get you a good price on tires but there work is POOR and there front-end alignment STINK. Stick to the tires with low roll and long tread wear. If your going to keep the car for years, get a seperate set of rims and mount the winter tires on them. Please post your results. Thank You zander
I just went through new tires on my 2010,dealership misaligned my cart and ruined the outside edges on my tires.they replaced them but only had avail. the harmony and exalto as.I went with the exalto and in less than a month i lost over 8 mpg and felt every road problem but they handled well.I called Michelin and they recommend the energy saver a/s.I then have the most comfortable ride ever and gained about 4 mpg over the original Yokohamas.in the snow belt they recommend snow tires as the energy saver a/s is good in light snow but some are much better but you loose the lrr.
The four all-season tires that most people seem to be happy with right now are: Energy Saver A/S EcoPlus EP422 ProContact with EcoPlus AVID Ascend The first two likely provide the best mpg and have 65,000 warranties but give up a bit of traction to get there. The Ecopia probably has the least traction of any of the 4. The last two trade a bit of mpg for better traction/handling and winter performance. They offer 80,000 and 85,000 mile warranties respectively. The ProContact seems to do about 2mpg worse than the OE tire which could put it 3mpg or so lower than the Energy Saver A/S but the performance is so good no one can ever say anything bad about it. It's probably the closest to a non-LRR tire.
If you have regular snow you are better off buying a separate set of wheels and using proper winter tires. Under 40F and most all-season tires suffer from drastically reduce traction (stopping power). Traction for forward movement is not your only concern. New LRR winter tires can sometime offer even better mpg than a LRR summer tire.
There is a good tire shop that handles Nokians (I use the WRg2s in CT) in West haven at a reasonable price (for Nokians). It is Marshal's Garage exit 43 (from the south) off I95 north about a half mile on the left. Marshal is not a Prius guy, but is honest and does good work. JeffD
Put a set of Energy Saver A/S on this week @ 43K miles. First impression: Nice to have round tires again. The original Goodyears sucked. I haven't been through a tank of gas yet, but I re-set the lie-o-meter when I got the tires, and it's showing 7 mpg better after 250 miles! I'll report back when I have a calculated number.
I did the same thing mainly because other people liked them and they have a tread life of 90,000 miles. I paid $103 each at Costco which was not bad for Michelins. My mileage suffered a little, at first, but after they broke in, I was back up where I was before.
Call him for a quote as the price varies with size and time. Marshall's Garage (203) 933-9136 990 Campbell Ave, West Haven, CT 06516 JeffD
I used Conti ecoplus, they arent great. I now have the energy saver, definitely better at the expense of wet traction
