Tires

Buy a set of Energy Saver A/S tires for regular use and keep the X-iCE tires for winter use. The Defenders are not a winter tire. Regardless of snow, all-season tires should not be used when temps stay below 40F.

 

It really depends on whether you're willing to swap between winter and summer tires.

I just finished putting new tires on the front of my Prius (got a flat and shredded the right front tire, unfortunately). For an all season tire, the Michelin Defenders seem to be as good as you can get get.

The Energy Saver A/S's have a better reputation for better fuel economy, but they have a consistently worse reputation for performance on snow and ice. (I realize they're only supposed to be put on in the summer, but more on this in a second).

The Michelin Ice-X have *very* good ratings for snow traction and ice braking, compared to any all season tire at all.

But here's my problem - obviously it's some hassle to switch tires back and forth. And if you want to minimize hassle, you'll have to buy an extra set of rims, and have space to store 4 extra tires. But it might be worth it for better snow and ice braking - I haven't used winter tires, but if they would keep me from sliding through interesections, just one day of better traction would probably be worth the time to switch tires.

The problem is - there's a season called "spring", and another one called "fall". During these seasons, you can have it being pouring rain one day, snowing the next day, icy the next day, then back to clear roads and raining again after that.

Or you have have it literally be where on a drive it's raining for part of the drive, *then* it turns to freezing rain and the road is covered in ice.

But winter tires all seem to make the same tradeoff - the better the snow and ice traction, the **worse** their ability is to handle hydroplanning and either dry or wet braking. The Ice-X's get 5/5 for snow and ice braking - but 2/5 for hydroplaning, and 1/5 for both wet and dry braking. Hankook evo's get 4/5 for hydroplaning, and around 3/5 for dry and wet braking - but only 4/5 for snow traction and 3/5 for ice traction (similar to the ratings that the Michelin Defender's get for snow and ice traction). You can go down the list, but basically the better it is for snow and ice, the worse it is for rain and wet.

In Minnesota, I think it snowed...last week? The week before that? And now it's around 90 degrees out. And like I said earlier, I've seen days where it's raining (so you need decent rain performance) - then later it turns to ice, or starts snowing, and in the same trip you need at least decent performance for both conditions.

This is why I've just stuck with a decent all season tire, and drive slower and more cautiously on days when it's snowed or there's ice (which is at least 20 this year) - I'd rather be familiar with how my car handles and be more cautious than try to keep track of which tires I have on, so which different driving style I should adopt for the conditions.

That being said, if I *alread* owned a pair or winter tires, I would probably hold onto them for 1 season and try them out, just out of curiousity if nothing else. It would admittedly cost more money to switch back and for, but I'd be really curious to actually try it...