California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year • Hacker News Board

Re: California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

#271

Post by ragall » Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

Melatonic wrote: post #229

ragall wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tire manufacturers tend to have different compounds for Europe (focused on lower rolling resistance) and North America (focused on traction and a wider range of working temperatures). I'd guess that California will now simply get the EU variants instead of the NA variants.

From what I remember European tired were often outperforming American tires in stopping performance and other metrics. So not sure that's true.

EU tires focus on low rolling resistance and low breaking distance (due to environmental and safety regulations), NA tires focus on durability (became people drive a lot more) and suitability for a wide range of temperatures (became of the climate).

Re: California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

#272

Post by lokar » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

frumper wrote: post #250

lokar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to imagine median driver performance is SoCal being any worse in heavy rain than it already is. I'm not sure the tires matter all that much if you don't alter your driving at all.

I'm not sure about your imagination. If people had worse tires then it would be even more difficult to go straight from the far left lane to the offramp 20 above the flow of traffic. /s

Off-ramp? They have trouble going in a straight line.

Re: California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

#273

Post by hamdingers » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 11:42 PM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #126

hamdingers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's backwards, trucks are the cause of most road damage in the first place. Trucking companies should pay enormous fees to use the roads given the disproportionate amount of damage they do to them[1]. It should be cost prohibitive to use trucks for anything but local deliveries. Before you say "this will increase costs for consumers," recognize consumers are already paying for these roads. 1. https://roadtax.carli…

Truckers pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel every year. They pay way more gas tax than you do.

Yes they do, but is it enough?

Given a fixed per-gallon gas tax, if you assume a 3000lb, 2 axle vehicle that gets 30mpg is paying enough road tax to cover its usage, then an 80,000lb, 5 axle vehicle would need to consume 320 gallons per mile to be paying gas tax proportionate to its road usage.

They don't (thankfully), so it's not. Trucks are massively subsidized by everyone else.

Re: California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

#274

Post by letmehelpyou » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

KetoManx64 wrote: post #258

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the issue is under regulation, yeah, agree on that point. Sounds like the only reasonable solution to the problem you raise is that the part of our government that's responsible for defense should be put under the seperate part that is responsible for protecting our environment instead of being exempt. I can't see any other real way of resolving that issue can you?

Because government self regulation totally works and the resources used up and the size of the government has not grown by such magnitudes that would make the founding fathers rethink the whole idea of democracy?

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Re: California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

#275

Post by Ferret7446 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 8:12 PM UTC

frumper wrote: post #251

mikestorrent wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Californians could dream up a stupid program like this and pretend that it's environmentally protective to send a ton more tire particles into the ecosystem, while costing consumers more, and probably increasing their carbon footprint at the manufacturing level, just to get shitty tires that might make a car a tiny bit more efficient. I had a set of these low-rolling-resistance tires stock on an early FWD EV I h…

This is about California. A place where an overwhelming majority of tires are all season, which are exempt from this.

Which makes it at best ineffectual, the same as almost all regulation in California