Can a Budget-Friendly EV Tire Outperform Tesla’s OEM Tire?
SHARP & Sailun Tires
You’ve got to hand it to the fine people at Sailun Tires. When they decide to organize a drive event for their brand-new ERANGE tire, they pull out all the stops. First, there’s the choice of ride. A fleet of new Tesla Model 3s is parked in West Hollywood, ready for action. As the poster boy for all EVs, it made sense that the Model 3 was the test rig for developing the ERANGE, a new tire engineered specifically for electric vehicles.
Here in LA, there are Model 3s everywhere — it’s like the welcome wagon for this wildly car-centric city except, well, it’s a sedan and not a wagon. There are so many Teslas around, when our group sets out nose-to-tail along infamous Mulholland Drive, things didn’t look out of place at all — it just looks like normal LA traffic. Once we’re free of the congestion, we head north and west towards the canyons of Malibu.
ERANGE Tire Test Session
ERANGE Tire Test Session
ERANGE Tire Test Session
ERANGE Tire Test Session
By this point in time, it’s pretty much a given that if you have a sports car or a sport bike and a few hours to kill in LA, this is where you go. The fact that Sailun is sending us along these brutally challenging roads in a Model 3 riding on their new tires is a big surprise. Clearly, this company does not lack for confidence in their product line.
But there are more surprises because, even within the confines of Malibu, some roads are more challenging than others. It’s rare that a car manufacturer sends a group of ego-fuelled journalists along Latigo Canyon Road, for example. Narrower than most other roads in the area, with more treacherous blind turns and fewer guardrails, this road is crushingly difficult on equipment — and on the driver’s nerves.
Yet, here we are, rocketing along the undulating surface, absolutely pushing the Model 3 and the ERANGE tires to their natural-born limits. If we hadn’t known this was an EV tire before the start of it all, we would’ve guessed it was a track tire. The grip is astonishingly good — we’re late on the brakes into the corners and rotating around curves with as many G forces as we dare. The tires complain not one bit. It’s a revelation.
Pouring back out onto the Pacific Coast Highway, we dial back on the aggression and blend in with our surroundings. In this more casual driving style, the ERANGE tires prove their worth yet again. The Model 3 is, of course, silent under power. So the tires need to play right along, keeping any squeaks or squeals or whines to an absolute minimum. Not only do the tires not make these sounds, but they also don’t make any sounds at all. If you’re looking for Rolls-Royce levels of quietness, these tires are just the ticket.
To top it all off, the engineers at Sailun have benchmarked other tires and assessed them in comparison to the ERANGE. Critical factors like rolling resistance, which can wreak havoc with EV driving range, were taken into consideration. So, too, were characteristics such as tread pattern and durability because EV tires need to be engineered for heavier vehicles with more riotous torque and acceleration.
Our single-day drive through LA and into the canyons of Malibu didn’t give us the chance to assess these more long-term qualities of the Sailun ERANGE. But we have reason to take their comparison tests at more than face value. After all, they under-promised on the high-performance cornering of these revolutionary new tires, so there’s every reason to believe they’ve got the competition covered across the board.
Learn more about ERANGE EV tires here.
