I am ordering a set of 4 (Michelin Hydro-edge) any one got any news on how these perform on highway, rain, and snow and mileage.....?? Jeff from VA

 

I replaced my tires at 26K with the Michelin HydroEdge. They are great tires, ride and handle much better than the Goodyear Integrity's that came with the car. Gas mileage has sufferred in the order of 5-8 MPG, even when pumped up to the max pressure. One rating that we are not seeing on tires is Low Rolling Resistance and a figure for this to compare with other tires. I was told when I bought the HydroEdge that they were LRR, but in fact they are not.

If you don't mind the mileage hit, I recommend them highly.

 

Michelin MXV4's are LRR's, but expensive.

 

Yes, the HydroEdge are listed as LRR tires, but my point is - there is no rating system for LRR tires, so what one manufacturer calls LRR, another may call standard. As for the HydroEdge, Michilen calls them LRR, but my experience (and others) is that they reduce your gas mileage significantly leaving one to belive they are NOT really LRR when compared to the factory tires.

Your mileage may vary, mine dropped 5-8 MPG, however I am still getting above 50 MPG.

Cheers, Doug

 

As was stated, the Michelin MXV4+ " Energy Saving" tires are LRR (see the attachedExcel spreadsheet file for my experience). They have improved my MPG slighly over the OEM Goodyear Integrity Tires (replaced at 45,000 miles, now at 68,000 miles). They were not terribly expensive for a premium tire (~$450 installed at BJs on sale), but will not exhibit the tread life of some of the others (I should get about 60,000 miles on them at the rate of wear they currently show, some others have claimed 90,000 mile tread life on other brand/model tires).

I run the MXV4+ tires at 42/40 PSI as I did the OEM Integity tires.

JeffD

 

Jeff,
How our your Michelin MXV4's working out?

Thanks for posting the spreadsheet.

You mention that the MXV4's have increased your MPG's slightly, but your calculated MPG's are slightly less for 2006 than for 2005.

Because the tires were put on in Oct. 2005, I did another calculation based on Jan-Sept 2005 and Jan-Sept 2006, and came up with 46.3 mpg for 2005 and 46.0 for 2006 (including the 1.007 circumference correction). That would seem to indicate the MXV4's are no better or no worse. Any comment on that?

My original Goodyear Integrity's are looking not very good at 26000 miles mainly because of wear on the outside of all four tires.

Perhaps this is an alignment problem and I hope I can get Toyota to rectify it under warranty, but I am not optimistic.

I'll need to replace them soon; the MXV4's seems like a good option.

Thanks . . . . .

 

Randall,

There is another factor, the Integrity tires were worn in 2005. This reduced their diameter (about 0.5 inches) and increased their revs/mile by about 2%. This creates an apparent improvement in MPG of almost 1.

If you look at the average MPG/month of those months that had MXV4+ tires, you can see that the apparent MPG is increasing as they wear as well (although in this case the tires still had about half of their tread left).

The Integrity tires rolling resistance in warm weather is not bad, but the MXV4+ use organosilicates in the rubber compound which improves rolling resistance (and traction) in cold weather. It's too bad that Michelin no longer supplies these tires in our 185/65HR15 size. I'll try the Nokian WR tires next as they promise LRR and better performance in Snow/Ice.

Attached is an updated version of my MPG spreadsheet.

JeffD

 

I just replaced the tires on my '04, as the Integrity tires that came with mine had a lot of wear on the front tires after 25k miles. I went with the Michelin HydroEdge, and other than losing about 3mpg so far, I am in love with them as they handle so much better than the originals ever did.

 

Make sure you are running at least 36F/34R in those new tires if you want decent mileage and mpg. Wear on the outside of your prior set would tend to indicate you ran your tires underinflated, or did not rotate them.

 

They were rotated regularly, I just ran them at the 35/33 on the door panel for the first two years. I am running the new ones at 38/36, as that seems to be my sweet spot so far.