California is coming for your tires next

Most drivers don't spend much time thinking about tire regulations. You buy the tire that fits your vehicle, your driving, and your budget. If you live somewhere with real winters, you may switch to snow tires. If you drive a performance car, you probably care a lot about grip and handling.

California has other ideas.

Someone driving an SUV has different requirements from someone commuting in a small hybrid. A Mustang owner who takes his car to the track has different priorities again.

On a recent episode of “The Drive,” my co-host Karl Brauer and I discussed new California rules targeting the rolling resistance of replacement tires. Beginning in 2029, tires sold in the state will have to meet new efficiency requirements, with the standards becoming more stringent in the years that follow.

It sounds harmless enough. Lower rolling resistance means a tire requires less energy to keep moving, which can improve fuel economy in a gasoline vehicle and range in an EV.

But fuel economy isn't the only thing a tire has to do.

Get a grip

Tires are a collection of compromises. Grip, tread life, road noise, ride quality, wet-weather performance, handling, and efficiency all matter, and manufacturers design different tires for different vehicles and drivers. The tire you want on a Prius isn't necessarily the tire you want on a Mustang — or a 1,000-horsepower performance car.

Karl had just driven one of those: the new 1,000-horsepower Brabus Bodo. We were talking about how dramatically temperature and tire compound can affect a performance car when he raised the obvious question: Could California eventually make it harder to buy the kind of tire such a car was designed to use?

That's where this gets concerning.

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California king

California isn't a small automotive market that tire companies can simply ignore. If a manufacturer has to produce one version of a tire for California and another for the rest of the country, it has to decide whether producing both makes economic sense.

We've already watched a version of this happen with automobiles. California's size and economic clout have allowed its emissions policies to influence vehicles sold far beyond the state's borders. Tire manufacturers face the same basic economics: It can be cheaper and simpler to build a product that satisfies the toughest major market than maintain separate versions for different states.

And California rarely remains alone for long. Other states have historically adopted many of its automotive and environmental standards. A rule that begins in Sacramento can therefore affect what manufacturers choose to offer consumers thousands of miles away.

Rubber, meet road

That's why I don't see this simply as an argument about squeezing another fraction of a mile per gallon out of a car. It's about whether drivers will continue to have the freedom to choose the tire best suited to how and where they drive.

I live in Buffalo. Winter tires aren't an enthusiast accessory here. They're a safety decision. Someone driving an SUV has different requirements from someone commuting in a small hybrid. A Mustang owner who takes his car to the track has different priorities again.

There is no single ideal tire for all of them.

I talk about tires constantly because those four contact patches are the only things connecting your vehicle to the road. You can have the best brakes, suspension, and stability-control system in the world, but ultimately they all depend on the tire being able to grip the pavement.

Efficiency matters. But so do traction, handling, braking, and giving drivers the ability to choose the right tire for the job.

California's rules don't fully take effect for several years. Drivers should pay attention now, because by the time they discover that the tire they want is no longer available, the decision may already have been made for them.

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