EV Tyres: What’s Actually Inside the Rubber and What Happens When It Wears Out

Electric vehicles are no longer a curiosity in Australian workshops. They’re on your ramps and the tyres they arrive on are quietly reshaping what your team needs to know about fitment, wear and end of life handling.

Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) commissioned independent research consultants Marsden Jacob Associates and Blue Environment to look specifically at what EV tyres are made of, how they wear and what their growing numbers mean for the Australian tyre industry. The report is one of the most comprehensive Australian examinations of the subject to date and the findings deserve attention across the trade.

The market context is moving fast

Growth scenarios modelled for the study project EV sales could represent between 36% and 60% of all new vehicle sales by 2030. Under the Central scenario, the total stock of EVs on Australian roads could reach around 2.7 million vehicles by 2030.

That translates directly to tyre volume. End of life EV tyres could reach between 2.2 million and 3.2 million units annually by 2034, equivalent to around 26,000 tonnes and representing approximately 12% of all end of life passenger and light commercial vehicle tyres by weight.

For tyre retailers and workshops, this is not a distant horizon question. It is already in your tyre bay.

What makes an EV tyre different

The report is careful to make an important point that gets lost in the marketing noise: EV marketed tyres are likely a completely contained subset within the compositional range of conventional ICE vehicle tyres and will remain so. In other words, there is no exotic new category of rubber.

The four key functional areas are lower rolling resistance to reduce energy consumption and increase range, increased abrasion resistance to compensate for the typically greater weight of EVs, lower road noise generation or noise suppression and stronger sidewalls to handle that extra weight particularly in cornering.

EVs are typically 20% to 30% heavier than equivalent petrol or diesel vehicles and reach maximum torque almost instantaneously, increasing tyre friction and contributing to elevated tyre wear. Major manufacturers including Bridgestone, Goodyear, Michelin and others have responded with product lines specifically targeting these demands.

Wear rates and what the evidence actually says

There is plenty of confident language in the market about exactly how much faster EV tyres wear than ICE equivalents. The TSA report takes a more measured position.

EVs can typically be expected to experience higher tyre wear than tyres on equivalent ICE vehicles due to greater weight and higher torque, however specific evidence to conclusively support a defined wear rate differential could not be confirmed. Research also indicates that up to 30% of tyre wear can be attributed to driver behaviour.

What is clear is that technological advancement is already working to close the gap. Electronically limited torque delivery, advances in battery energy density reducing overall vehicle weight and more abrasion resistant compounds are all in play. The picture in five years may look quite different from today.

Standards: Australia is watching but not yet acting

At the time of writing, there are no specific standards in Australia relating to EV tyres. Australian Design Rules for passenger tyres under ADR 23/03 remain performance based rather than prescriptive, meaning there is no requirement to fit a tyre of a particular design or composition to an EV.

The ADR landscape is actively evolving in 2026, though none of the current updates address EV tyre composition specifically. The regulatory watch point for the whole industry remains Euro 7, which for the first time will set emission limits and minimum durability requirements for tyres. Australian authorities have indicated they will consider mandating equivalent requirements locally once international standards are agreed. That signals the direction of travel for the whole industry.

The full report

The complete TSA report is available at no cost via the Tyre Stewardship Australia website and is worth adding to your workshop reference library. It covers composition, wear analysis, end of life processing implications and the Australian regulatory landscape in full.

Download it at: tyrestewardship.org.au