Clever polymer science and a little robotic precision created the Hakkapeliitta 01.
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These new winter tires have studs that retract as it warms up
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That was my first thought too, but I can't think of any possible way to mold that into the tire carcass itself, and any type of inner tube wouldn't be able to exert the right type of force, plus be prone to delamination and the requirement to have a special coaxial valve stem, or drill the wheels for a second valve stem.
The only other way I can think of doing it is something like a softer Run-Flat donut inside the wheel that physically presses the studs into the ground when you let some air out of the tires but leaves them fully retracted when properly pressurized. The temperature variable compound is probably the most elegant solution.
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Adjusted for inflation, I spent more or less the same amount in the early '00s for Pirelli and Nokian tires, and that's when I was a broke-ass grad student. This is a cutting-edge extreme-duty winter tire for climates where winter is half the year. That's not out of control. It's a fuckin' bargain.
Absolute nonsense. All-season tires lose 30% of their traction below 45 degrees. Below 20F, 40-50%. Snow tires have their best traction at 15F and at that temperature have better stopping distances on packed snow and ice than all-seasons have on bare pavement.
Chains are an occasional-use solution for Class 8 trucks, or people who might need to drive up Donner Pass or I-70 once or twice a season. They kill fuel economy, ride, maneuverability, and can damage your tires and the road. This is terrible, irresponsible advice.
How nice for you that you can rely on that option. First responders and other critical workers often can't.
And no matter how you drive, snow tires are always going to have better traction in cold temperatures than all-seasons. No matter how much margin your driving style buys you, proper tires double or triple it. Insane not to avail yourself of the option if you spend nontrivial amounts of time driving in winter conditions.
I'm about as middle class as it gets and I spent $1200 recently on 3-peak rated all weather tires, because I live in a highly variable climate where winter can be as cold as -20F and as warm as 50-60F. It is a critical safety technology on a vehicle I use daily, and which I might be called on to drive in extreme winter weather. I can think of a hundred things I'd cut from the budget sooner than tires.
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Living in NH, I have 2 sets of tires. All seasons on the OEM rims, and Blizzak snows on steel rims. November on go the Snows. Late March, off come the Snows. My work is 15 miles. I have to be in the office. They are reasonable about WFH during snow, but, there are still times when I must drive on the highway to get to work or get home.
The single biggest reason I use snow tires are other drivers who insist on going 70 in 6 inches of snow or slop. I want the control.
I've had 3 accidents in my driving career. All 3 times were people who lost control on snow or slick slushy roads and hit me. If I have control, I have a better chance to not get hit by you.
The single biggest reason I use snow tires are other drivers who insist on going 70 in 6 inches of snow or slop. I want the control.
I've had 3 accidents in my driving career. All 3 times were people who lost control on snow or slick slushy roads and hit me. If I have control, I have a better chance to not get hit by you.
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Little harder to UPS a fuckin' Audi to a journalist.
I get to travel to Hawaii a couple of times a year for work. I was there twice within a one-month period in January and February. Yes, it's nice to get a little break from cold weather and eat some fresh poke. But work travel is still work. The jet lag sucks, the business hotel sucks, being out of your comfortable routine without the fun of an actual vacation sucks. Some people with cool jobs get to go cool places to do those jobs, and that's nice for them, but it's not any reason to question if they've been suborned or influenced. Hard not to see the envy in a lot of these criticisms, even if that wasn't what you, specifically, intended with that particular comment.
And Alaska, the US upper Midwest, and Iceland. And a lot of places at high altitude in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, etc. Obviously what kind of tires you need is highly dependent on your use case, climate, location, and whatever, but a tire does not have to come standard on every Toyota Camry to be relevant or a valid market.
There's a lot of folks who you wouldn't really expect, too. I'm a biologist. I could work remotely from literally anywhere unless I'm doing field work. I've also taken 40-hour HAZWOPER training, am a class A/B underground storage tank operator, and if a plane crashes and there's fuckin' hydrazine on the ground, someone calls my ass night or day, rain sleet or snow, to come deal with that shit.
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Also, that last picture, the red RS4 Avant with white rally wheels?
[bites knuckle] eeeeeennnnnnngggghhhhhhh
[bites knuckle] eeeeeennnnnnngggghhhhhhh
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And, as my wife and I discovered the first time we put chains on her Impreza, fuck up your wheels.
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Yeah, I think last time it came up one of the authors mentioned that many of their trips they spend as much time in the airplane as they do on the ground testing the product. Maybe one overnight in the hotel and a meal or two at local restaurants before flying right back. It's not nothing, but it's also not 6 hours of hosted product testing followed by 3 days of debauchery.
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As someone with wealth of winter driving experience (Canadian) as well as a wealth of practical and technical tire knowledge I can say there is a vast, vast performance delta between studded and unstudded tires. Where I currently reside studded tires are nearly a necessity. I have Hakks on both our vehicles, one set is unstudded and that car is quite a bit trickier to operate day to day.
Another thing to note is that conditions are not just pavement, snow, ice. Temperature and humidity, sunlight, temperature of underlying pavement, all contribute subtly to the “texture” of the snow, as well as how packed it is and does it have aggregate throughout due to sanding or gravelling, or salt content (makes a “loamy” texture at temperatures where the salt is no longer an effective melting agent.)
On salt. Salting does FAR more damage to pavement and concrete over time than studs. To combat this the Province has moved to a liquid brine that is far less damaging but also less effective as a melting agent due to dilution from air moisture (the solution is hygroscopic) which results in copious black ice in shaded areas if the road is otherwise bare. This has resulted in most of the local population running studs, and thus more mechanical damage to the road. I should also note that both studs and brine completely erase the acrylic road paint they use here within a few months. So we basically never have road lines here.
Another thing to note is that conditions are not just pavement, snow, ice. Temperature and humidity, sunlight, temperature of underlying pavement, all contribute subtly to the “texture” of the snow, as well as how packed it is and does it have aggregate throughout due to sanding or gravelling, or salt content (makes a “loamy” texture at temperatures where the salt is no longer an effective melting agent.)
On salt. Salting does FAR more damage to pavement and concrete over time than studs. To combat this the Province has moved to a liquid brine that is far less damaging but also less effective as a melting agent due to dilution from air moisture (the solution is hygroscopic) which results in copious black ice in shaded areas if the road is otherwise bare. This has resulted in most of the local population running studs, and thus more mechanical damage to the road. I should also note that both studs and brine completely erase the acrylic road paint they use here within a few months. So we basically never have road lines here.
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All that said, this
Is the most marketing-brained way he could have phrased that. You could practically hear Dyhrman pronouncing the TM.
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The median tire price in the US is between $160 and $230, so $1,000 a set is not extreme (especially as that's not going to include taxes).
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Yup. And that kind of itinerary kicks your ass, because short trips give your circadian rhythm whiplash. In February, I was in the air or in airports for 13 hours on Monday, onsite for Tuesday and Wednesday, one of which was my friggin' birthday, put in 8-hour days at the worksite and then went to three-hour engagements from 6-9pm, worked 8 hours again on Thursday, downed a couple of beers, got on a plane, and got home at 10am Friday. It was only three time zones away and it took me a full five days to feel normal again. Every trip I take, and that was #11 since July 2023, costs me 4-5 days of feeling like dogshit afterward.
I did take myself out for tiki drinks and pie on my birthday, and I happen to think a mai tai is the perfect pairing for a slice of banana cream. Waitress hooked me up too, she practically gave me a quarter of the pie.
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Being that this is Ars, I would have really appreciated more detail on how the stud retraction actually works. There was one sentence and it got into virtually zero detail. I can guess that the studs sink in when rolled over when the layer is softer and vice versa when it's stiffer but surely there's more interesting engineering that went into it. Or maybe it's just that simple and explaining that fact would be good. Maybe some challenges in integrating the different layers of the tire? Does it impact handling versus a conventional studded tire? Cool story about the extendable stud prototype... how did that work? Was it the same system or something totally different. The author drove the tires on the ice, can they make a comparison to the old model? Did they test the warm/cold performance? Did they notice anything aside from "I can attest to the quality of the gripping power."?
I'm trying not to just complain and instead give some article feedback. I read Ars for the engineering details and digging in deeper than the usual press release advertorials that blight the tech journalism world. This article didn't really go beyond the surface level and that's disappointing.
I'm trying not to just complain and instead give some article feedback. I read Ars for the engineering details and digging in deeper than the usual press release advertorials that blight the tech journalism world. This article didn't really go beyond the surface level and that's disappointing.
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Said shaking fist at the clouds. Yes. Tires are very expensive these days. Tires are also wildly more capable that they were when you fixed the price of tires in your mind. Are you still in a car with 13"tires? Are they 175's? No, didn't think so. My first real car (still bought well used and rusty) I moved up to this from 165's!. With the side impact requirements, aesthetically most cars "need" an 18" or larger diameter, and with he added weight of most new cars, and the desire to corner well, the width of the tire on a modern sit-box dwarfs what was once put on a performance car. There is, in short, more "there" there than 30 years ago.
Lastly, keep in mind the only part of your car that touches the ground and keeps you on the road is the tire. Good tires can make a mediocre car very safe. Poor tires on even the best car are a recipe for disaster.
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Good ol' Audi RS. No electric golf cart with weird shapes we see too much on our roads will ever replicate the sensations and fun of the German RS, M, AMG and so forth.
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When tires get too expensive, there's a simple and cost effective solution.
View: https://youtu.be/h4OcW4NPW78?si=pjvczNOTeNA1Q7qy
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The only reason I would ever want wheels larger than 17's is just to fit larger front brakes on a car I'm taking to the track. Don't care what anybody else thinks about aesthetics, wheels larger than 18in are ugly to me because my first thought goes immediately to higher NVH, likelihood of damage, unsprung weight, and cost of replacement.
EDIT: fixed minor typo
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Modern tires are insane, even and maybe especially when they're run of the mill. I posted this a while back:
And that's not even getting into the cutting-edge high performance, winter, and A/T tires, which have just gone bonkers since the '90s or early oughts. The 911 Dakar comes stock with Pirellis that can handle 0.98 lateral g's, which is better grip than summer performance tires from 20 years ago, PLUS they're all-terrains with reinforced carcasses and stone ejectors, AND they're rated to 155mph! And they're three-peak all weather rated!
If tires were athletes, that's like, I dunno, Mikaela Shiffrin taking podium in Super G, walking across the Village, impressing the judges in figure skating, then coming back in the summer and bringing home metal in the 800m. And maybe break dancing. And doing a marathon.
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I wonder if Nokian would trickle this tech down to their bicycle tires. Where I live, studded tires would occasionally be useful, but usually not enough to be worth bothering to change out my regular tires. Whether it would be worth paying a lot extra for it is a different question. I guess if I can manage 15 years of daily bike commuting without studs, then maybe not.
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Exactly. Particularly when talking about whether to spend on winter tires, they're essentially good insurance. $1k is a lot of money but it's a lot cheaper than fixing virtually any piece of bodywork much less a serious accident.
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I'm about to say the same refrain I say many times over, so stop me if you've heard it before.
But...
Better public transport, leading to fewer cars on the road, would reduce wear and tear on roads in winter months. Better city design, leading to more people on foot or cycling, would do the same. These are long term fixes, even if started today, but if the goal is to reduce the cost of paving roads all the time, needing to expand roads lane by lane by lane is part of the same basic cost problem.
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I did this thing as a kid where any time something had "the" in it's name I'd call it "The 'the thing'". I had a toy car called "the wheel" which I kept calling "The the wheel".
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If you don't need the heavy "bite" in deep snow, and just want the softer grip the rubber compound gives on icy roads, try the Michelin Cross Climate 2 all-year tires. They've been a solid option for three of my family's cars now (two in Michigan's Lower Peninsula, one in Maryland) for several years. Not noisy in the summer, enough traction in the winter to make my wife feel more secure. Very good braking/stopping capabilities.
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A full set of high-end winter tires (Blizzak, X-ice, etc.) for a Mazda3 is $800 CAD ($600 USD).
Plus $80 to mount them.
You had a set of 3-season tires that last 60,000 km or 3 years.
Now you have a set of 3-season tires that last 60,000 km or 6 years plus a set of winter tires that last 60,000 km or 6 years. You're still buying eight tires every six years.
The only actual additional cost, long term, is the $200 for a set of steel rims and maybe paying for off-season storage of the 2nd set if you don't have a garage or basement. If you aren't paying for storage, your TCO hasn't really changed at all, and storage is cheap.
We swap ours twice a year ourselves (the kids help and it takes maybe 40 minutes total, less if they don't help). You have to rotate tires periodically anyway, and you have to take them off for scheduled brake & chassis inspections periodically anyway, so it's no extra work or cost to sync that up.
Obviously the cost per set goes up if you have a bigger heavier car with bigger wheels, but that's just how big heavy cars work...... don't like it, buy a smaller car.
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Not really, because the studded tire technology has also improved. As someone who lives at 56˚ north and uses Nokian tires, their Hakkapeliitta 10 Studded is noticeably better than their non studded tires. Aside from the debate about local laws though, here's some other points to discuss:
1) Studded tires actually have slightly less traction on dry pavement, so they are best suited to a place where you are frequently on ice
2) Winter tires get soft in the heat and that causes them to wear quickly releasing microplastics and other chemicals that are lethal to, at a minimum, salmon. It is important to remove them promptly when the temp is consistently above freezing
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Oh, there's definitely still benefit to studs in severe high-latitude winter conditions. It's more that 30 or 40 years ago your choices were "studs" or "lol good luck" whereas now the studless versions have closed much of the gap and can be totally viable choices in areas where, a few decades ago, studs were practically essential.
I learned to drive in the early '00s on "all season" rubber and came to expect that just sliding around at 12 km/h, spinning a front wheel at 900 rpm on a 2% grade, etc. were things that happened all the time. The difference between good studded vs. good studless winter tires is not zero, but it's tiny compared to the difference between any modern winter tire and any all-season of 25 years ago.
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Are there any health issues from regular tires wearing and putting rubber and plastic dust into environment?
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Repetition! NEVER use a generic term or a pronoun when the full product name will do!
...
Mind you the name of this thing is so lengthy no amount of repetition is going to get me to remember that.
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You never hit car-exhaust black ice at stoplights? There were a couple times where I had wished I'd gotten around to switching out my bike tires sooner those winters.
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Yes, they're a Big Effing Problem (tm). See for example https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721039747
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vedekhaliwell
Ars Praetorian
My state (WA) only permits them between 11/1 and 3/31 absolute and apply to any vehicle irrespective of where it might come from. There is a bill before the legislature that will restrict them even further to a "notice only" meaning unless the state says the conditions require traction devices, you are not permitted to put them on and drive on the roads. You can bet that the western side will try to impose it on the eastern side which has completely different weather.
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One of the issues with the move to heavier and heavier cars is that studded tires will cause more wear. A light car doesn't really wear down the roads that much, but a three ton monster going at 100 km/h surely will.
This kind of new technology is very interesting in combating this upward tendency and can perhaps keep the road wear manageable also in the future.
And no, snow chains are not the answer. Is it even legal to drive 100 km/h with chains on?
This kind of new technology is very interesting in combating this upward tendency and can perhaps keep the road wear manageable also in the future.
And no, snow chains are not the answer. Is it even legal to drive 100 km/h with chains on?
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As an Oregonian living near the mountains I'm familiar with the rules allowing studded tires November 1 to April 1, which happens to coincide with peak ski season. The important bit is mountain passes and snow park pass areas require some combination of traction tires and chains.
Personally I use studless tires (Bridgestone Blizzak) since they work better in many conditions and I can be a little lazier about removing them in spring. There are some use cases where studs work better and Nokian's retractable studs will reduce damage.
Personally I use studless tires (Bridgestone Blizzak) since they work better in many conditions and I can be a little lazier about removing them in spring. There are some use cases where studs work better and Nokian's retractable studs will reduce damage.
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After 3 winters on Blizzaks I think I am sticking with studless going forward. The wear rate has been good and the traction great. I do have 2 sets of wheels and swap as soon as it is safe in the spring, to reduce wear.
I am in Anchorage, Alaska at 61˚ North.
I commute by bike with studded fat tires in the winter, and I am not going studless on that though.
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Perhaps that's why they are only claiming a 30% reduction in road damage.
So nearly a nothing-burger, because the reduction is not enough to justify wider usage.
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That is a great idea! Why not have two valves for two compartments: one for general cushioning, and second that channels behind the studs?
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No. I plan my rides for mid-day when the risk of hitting a patch of ice is at it's lowest. And my area has had a few mild winters of late.
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