Effect Of Tyre Size On Vehicle's Fuel Economy

Tyre sizes and their effects:

Tyre size can differ in many ways, some tyres are broad while some are narrow, some got bigger rims while others have bigger side walls. So, let's dive deeper into this.

Wide Tyres:

Wide tyres mean more greater area which means more contact with surface resulting in better grip and increased friction. If you are a person who loves driving, you are going to enjoy this as it's grip will allow you to accelerate or brake faster. Well, greater grip means more power would be required to overcome the friction resulting in reduced fuel economy.

Large Outer Diameter:

Tyres with bigger diameter look good but they are not always helpful in increasing your vehicles fuel efficiency. Generally, when people install new tyres with bigger outer diameter, the width of the tyre is also increased. Increased width results in increased friction and results in reduced fuel efficiency.

If we talk about tyres with same width but different diameter, the one with the larger diameter will help in increasing your vehicles fuel economy as the larger the diameter the smaller number of times the wheel has to rotate to cover a given distance, resulting in less RPM, giving better fuel efficiency.

Small Outer Diameter:

When compared to larger tyres, small prove to be more fuel efficient if you are doing a lot of starting and stopping i.e., if you drive in a city with a lot of traffic smaller tyres are optimum as it requires extra power to overcome friction due to larger tyres.
If you are the person who travels long distances with constant speeds, then not only larger tyres help increase fuel economy, but they also reduce noises and makes ride comfortable.

If you have a vehicle and you are planning to change its wheel size, keep in mind that the tyres provided with vehicle are the most efficient ones and changing its size may cause the performance to differ. But if you are just changing your rim size without changing outer diameter or width, it does not have a significant impact on the fuel economy of the vehicle.