Another reason winter mileage bites: millions of snow tires without wheel covers
 

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2370/...85d29de7d7.jpg
source: DrewOtt - Snow Tires on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

At this time of year I see an increasing number of snow tires on steel rims showing up on cars.

I can't help but wonder about the collective fuel consumption impact of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of vehicles that don't bother adding wheel covers to their snow rims.

We already know that non-smooth wheels/rims eat fuel:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...-6-a-4368.html

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...-7-a-2684.html

PS: was inspired to post this topic when I saw Tim's wheel-cover-less Prius picture: :O

http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/prius025.JPG

From his Prius thread.

I bet the wastage is less than the hundreds of millions of miles driven hauling unused 4x4 machinery around on dry summer pavement!

In my defense, I think my wheel covers are worse than leaving the wheels as is! :p

If my memory serves me, when I added my smooth wheel covers to the steel wheel on my xA the improvement was ~5-6% -- pretty substantial. Every car is different, I'm sure -- the xA has huge wheel openings...

A tangential benefit of full wheel covers is it is less likely that you will get snow jammed into the rim which throws things seriously out of balance! Rolling resistance of a bouncing wheel cannot be good...

I think i need to get some coroplast so i can do mine.

I can't help but wonder about the collective fuel consumption impact of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of vehicles that have oversize pimp wheels.

http://images2.rdefined.com/d/20719-..._SL_wheels.jpg

Those steelies look pretty aerodynamic.

That VW looks amazing.

Bigger rims aren't universally bad, ya know.