Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tons of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tire-derived chemicals in most human urine samples.
I ride motorcycles and tires have always been a major issue with riders because of cost. Bike tires wear out fast even though it’s a lighter vehicle and tends to put on less mileage.
The main culprit that most industry insiders have suggested is that motorcycle tires are purposely designed to not last as long because its so easy to market crappy tires to the vast majority of riders. All you need is have marketing campaign of racers and racing tires and then stamp the name on a tire and sell it to young guys who want to ride as fast as possible … they’ll pay hundreds year after year for tires that only last one season but supposedly give them great performance.
I ride moderately on a 1998 BMW K1200, a fast sport touring bike and I put on moderate mileage every summer … I’m not a long distance rider … yet I have to change my tires just about every year.
Fortnine, a Youtube channel dedicated to motorcycle riding did a great description of this …
https://youtu.be/hEZeR9E3JyY
The giveaway is that you could put a small car tire on a motorcycle and it would last ten times longer … whereas you place a motorcycle tire on a motorcycle tire and it will last for a far shorter time.
Motorcycle tires are designed to not last as long … fast riders can argue that better tires do not last as long and I agree with them … but for moderate riders or just Sunday riders with low mileage, there is no need to have motorcycle tires last for such a short period of time. It’s all meant to sell as many tires as possible for no reason other than to make someone money.
The trouble is that motorcycles are generally way higher-performance than cars (in terms of e.g. HP/weight ratio), so putting low-friction, long-lasting tires on them is irresponsible. It’d be like putting Prius tires on a Lamborghini: sure, you could drive the thing responsibly and within the performance limits of the tire, but it’s missing the point of the vehicle.
Now, if more motorcycles were built sensibly – with much less horsepower – then I’d expect the tires to last a decent amount of time. For example, do 49cc scooters have the tire wear problem you’re complaining about? I’m willing to bet the answer is “no.”
This is where the debate constantly diverges to extremes … either have sensible long lasting tires … or high performance racing tires … but nothing moderate in between.
Manufacturers are more than able to produce a reasonable motorcycle tire that would have enough performance and would last far longer. There just isn’t any incentive to do it. It makes them far more money to make tires that don’t last as long and at this point, I think everyone knows that, we are just not able to do anything about it.
Like my 1998 BMW … it’s an ancient machine at this point and it was originally a performance bike when it was new and would have benefited from a high performance tire … but its 26 years old and I really don’t trust it to go fast any more but I love the look of the bike and I enjoy riding it. I maintain and service it myself but there are far too many old parts on it that there will inevitably something that will fail and I really don’t want that to happen at speed. All I need is a good decent tire, not a tire that is meant for the race track for a modern newer bike.
I guarantee your '98 BMW is still way faster than my '90 Miata, and even that is still a sports car that still deserves and requires decent tires. Therefore, yours still does too.
I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I used 49cc scooters as an example – I really do think that’s pretty close to the limit of how much power a motorcycle can have and still reasonably use long-wearing, not-very-grippy tires.
Is it not because they have so little contact area compared to passenger vehicle tires?
The contact area compared to the weight ratio is not that different from any other vehicle … a bike weighs less so it has less contact … a car weighs more and so needs more contact with the road … a truck weighs a lot and needs even more contact with the road.
The end result is always the same … the technology is there to make a motorcycle tire last far longer and the same with car tires … the problem is is that there is no financial incentive to make a long lasting tire that would be better for the environment.
I know motorcycle tires need replacing fairly frequently, but I had no idea it was a racket. Although, I’d think they’d generally need to be softer for maximum traction on two wheels.
The whole traction debate only makes sense if you start getting into racing speeds and riding on a fast race track. For the average rider, we’re only riding at normal highway speed (at least we are supposed to) and guys like me like our riding lifestyle enough to never get into crazy speeds because we baby our bikes, we don’t want to create any more variables to put our lives at risk and we’re cheap and don’t want to wear out our tires.
If I knew of a manufacturer that produced a cheap $100 tire that could last four or five season of my light moderate riding … it would be the only tire I would buy. But there are so many manufacturers, types, subtypes, models, years, design, material of tires out there that’s it’s a constant science to try to figure out what is real and what isn’t. I usually don’t have the time to research it all nor do I have the resources that I just end up buying the same Metzeler tires because I don’t want to order the wrong tire and I definitely don’t want to install the wrong tire either.