Tires With Superpowers

There are many different types of tire to choose from depending on your needs as a driver. All-season general purpose tires often called “touring tires,” work well for sedans and crossovers. High-performance tires are for pairing with sports coupes. All-terrain and trail tires for your SUV or pickup add capability and a rugged appearance. Winter tires are for those who need the best traction possible in snow and icy weather conditions.

However, within many of these categories are tires that have a nifty party trick, like your uncle Jonesy who could always pull a quarter from behind your ear. These special abilities can accomplish important things for a vehicle owner. We created this story to highlight tires with superpowers that go beyond the expected.

Self-Sealing Tires

As automakers fight to remove every last ounce of weight from EVs and cars in general, your spare tire has become a target. Not only does it take up space and cost money, it adds mass. So automakers are simply stealing them. The Chevy Bolt is one such example of a vehicle without a spare tire. However, the folks at Chevy don’t want you walking home if you have a puncture, so they looked to Michelin for a solution and found one. Michelin's Energy A/S SelfSeal tire.

Forgive us if we get too technical, but Michelin put in a layer of what scientists call goop behind the tread. This gooey gunk sits there spinning around and around clinging to the inside tire wall waiting for its day to shine. When you finally find that nail at your local home improvement store parking lot, the goop enters and surrounds the puncture and seals it up. You will lose enough air for your TPMS system to alert you that you have an issue, but you can top off the tire with air and drive around long enough to get home and order a replacement tire.

Kudos to Ford for using the same tire but still including a spare on its Explorer. Someplace in Ford’s design center is an Eagle Scout. One side benefit to the self sealing tire design is that it helps dampen out road noise and makes the cabin a bit quieter.

Noise Canceling Acoustic Foam

Speaking of tires that help with noise reduction, Pirelli has a tire that is lined with foam. The idea is that the foam helps to dampen out the road noise that is bouncing around inside of tires before it enters your cabin. It’s called the Pirelli Noise Cancellation System, or PNCS.

This technology reduces noise by 25%. Amusingly, Pirellis says its technology makes the car sound as if it were “traveling on only three wheels.” Having had a little experience in that area we beg to differ!

Tires That Protect Your Fancy Wheels

Automakers are now routinely equipping vehicles with 20-inch diameter wheels. They tend to be made of unobtainium and powder coated in two tone black and silver. They look fantastic! Until you parallel park on Mass. Ave. and catch a little curb rash. To help give you a second chance at keeping those gleaming alloys pristine, some tires come with a lip of protruding rubber. The idea is that if you gently nudge a curb you will feel the resistance and the tire’s lip will take the scuff, not your pricey wheel. The Goodyear Eagle F1 A/S-C is one example of a tire with this helpful feature.

Tires That Tell You When To Replace Them

All tires come with wear bars that help you to see when they need to be replaced. We like this method a lot more than trying to insert a coin into the tread. Goodyear’s Eagle Exhilarate makes seeing when the tire is ready for replacement much easier. The mold has a step-down system and a note to tell you exactly when the tire is ready for recycling.

All Season Tires Rated For Severe Snow Duty

Any tire that tries to do too many things well usually ends up falling short in one important way. With all-season tires, it is usually snow and ice performance that is lacking. Michelin worked hard and long to overcome this and has. The new Michelin CrossClimate2 tire is an all-season tire that is better termed all-weather.

Using a unique tread pattern and a long list of technologies, the CrossClimate2 offers drivers who will need to handle snow and ice often an alternative to swapping to dedicated winter tires each fall. This tire earns the "3-peak mountain snowflake rating" (3PMSF) that is required to qualify as a winter tire. Michelin knows that one reason people don’t use winter tires all year long is noise. Michelin’s PIANO Noise Reduction Tuning employs a tread with blocks and angles that cancel out "harmonic" road noise creating a quieter ride.

We’ve been testing these very tires on a Mazda CX-5 for a year now and they have proven to have no downsides and work very well in snow. These tires will give drivers who commute regardless of the weather or who head out when snow arrives to their favorite ski resort a new alternative. Car Talk fans might remember that the CrossClimate2 is a Golden Wrench Award winner.

Michelin isn’t alone in moving some all-season tires closer to fulfilling their stated mission. Goodyear’s Assurance ComfortDrive and Assurance WeatherReady both earn the 3PMSF stamp, as does Firestone’s WeatherGrip tire.

Trail-Rated Off-Road Capable Tires That Can Handle Snow

Like the all-season touring tires highlighted above, manufacturers of trail-rated tires with off-road capabilities have turned their attention to the need for better snow traction, particularly for today’s wide selection of crossover models. Falken’s WildPeak A/T Trail uses a lot of the technology that helps dedicated winter tires excel in snow and on ice. Falken added 3D sipes to create biting edges that enhance light snow and ice traction and help the tire earn the 3PMSF symbol. What we really like about this tire is that Falken designed it specifically for crossovers.

Overlanding is popular in places like Colorado where temps can start in the 60’s and quickly drop below the freezing point. A route that starts out on dry dirt paths can quickly become a snowy adventure.

Those who own overlanding SUVs should check out the WildPeak A/T3W all-terrain tire. This tire also sports the 3PMSF rating. Falken used a high-silica compound in its tread (think sand). Ford has adopted this tire for use on its new Bronco Sport to help enhance its “goes over any terrain” capabilities.

Another choice in this segment is the Yokohama Geolandar A/T G015. Subaru has chosen this tire as standard equipment on its rough and ready Forester Wilderness trim.

Tires Designed To Maximize Electric Vehicle Performance

Electric vehicles that can handle any type of driving are about to hit the market. However, for the majority of EV owners, range and efficiency come first. For many EV drivers noise reduction is a close second. Electric vehicles rely on tires with low rolling resistance to reduce energy consumption and prolong their range. However, that goal can mean a harder compound, which may transmit more road noise. In a vehicle on a weight-loss plan with minimum noise insulation that is a problem. So Goodyear designed its new ElectricDrive GT just for EV owners.

The ElectricDrive GT tire features Goodyear’s SoundComfort Technology, which helps reduce road noise. The tire also features an asymmetric tread pattern and specialized rubber compound to provide enhanced all-season traction coupled with a long life expectancy.

Tires That Can Run Flat

There are times when stopping to change a tire or even to re-inflate one may be risky or unsafe. One alternative to a spare often employed by automakers is a run-flat capable tire. These tires can drive without air pressure up to moderate speeds of around 50 MPH for pretty fair distances, often about 50 miles.

The new Lexus NX 450h+ plug-in hybrid uses the Bridgestone Alenza A/S02 RFT tire. Bridgestone is also launching a new tire called DriveGuard Plus which has run-flat capability but also has improved wet weather traction and a long 65,000-mile treadwear warranty. While we are fans of the idea of a more robust tire that can run temporarily without air, doing so eliminates the tire’s ability to be repaired. This is one superpower we have mixed feelings about.

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