They don’t always but generally speaking you’ll get fewer miles out of a motorcycle tyre than a car tyre. The typical bike tyre will last around 4,000-8,000 miles. The typical car tyre will last 8,000-20,000 miles.
There are several factors at play here:
Contact patch
A motorcycle tyre’s contact patch is generally described as being the size of a credit card. So two credit card-sized amounts of rubber compared to four car tyres, each with a relatively massive contact patch when compared to a motorcycle. Even a tiny shopping car like a Fiat 500 with thin wheels has a vastly larger amount of rubber on the road than a motorcycle tyre.
Rolling circumference
The size of a tyre determines its rolling circumference. Most motorcycle wheels are 17″ although Adventure bikes tend to have 19″ or 21″ front wheels and often an 18″ rear.
However lots of modern cars have a minimum of 17″ wheels, with some of the spicier versions running 19″ wheels and the real performance monsters running 21″ wheels.
Yes a lot of cars tend to run a thinner profile 30-40% (think low profile run flat tyres) when compared to 50-70% on a bike tyre but as an outright measurement they tend to work out approximately similar.
So when you’re comparing a 3-series BMW with 19″ wheels against a Vespa scooter with 13″ wheels you’ve got a huge difference in circumference.
Car vs Motorcycle vs Scooter circumference example
I’ve done a few sums to show you how many rotations the typical car or bike tyre goes through to travel 1-kilometre.
Mercedes S200 AMG Estate: 255/35/19 tyres, tyre circumference 2076mm, 482 rotations per kilometre
Kawasaki Z1000SX: 120/70/17 front tyre, tyre circumference 1862, 537 rotations per kilometre
Vespa GTS125: 130/70/13 front tyre, tyre circumference 1630mm, 613 rotations per kilometre
As you can see, the poor Vespa rider’s tyre are going to be rotating more than 100 times more per kilometre than the Mercedes and over 70 more than the Kawasaki rider. And that’s without factoring the tiny contact patch of the scooter compared to the car.
Tyre compound
With lean an important factor in the world of two wheelers, the tyres have to be able to grip at an angle. Therefore compound is vital in helping the tyre deform and spread into the tarmac in order to help the bike grip. This compound is generally softer, to allow the tyre to deform more for any given force. The softer compound will wear faster than a harder compound, hence affecting the longevity of the tyre.
Driven wheels
The maximum number of tyres that are driven on a motorcycle or scooter is one. That is to say, the tyre where the engine’s power is transmitted to. On a car that minimum is two, which spreads the load and on some cars it’s four, further reducing the per-tyre load.
Power to weight ratio
Even though most cars produce more horsepower than bikes, it’s power to weight that’s the real tell tale.
Even a simple scooter like a 29bhp Honda SH350, produces 168bhp per tonne. Compare that to a 360bhp Audi S4 that produces 199bhp per tonne and then compare that to an Aprilia RSV4 1100 Factory that makes 204bhp, which equates to 1002bhp per tonne.
So even a fairly fast car can’t hold a candle to a fast bike in terms of power to weight.
Now imagine putting that power through a single rear tyre on a bike, compared to four tyres on the Audi.
The final word
Yes bike tyres wear out faster than the average car tyre but – factoring in all of the above – it’s actually amazing bike tyres last as long as they do!
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