I'd intended to get an RX with AWD but ended up with an ES for a number of reasons, Good all season tires will do me for most of the year (355 days) but i have a few guaranteed trips to the mountains which get fairly serious snow. Not Syracuse snow but a lot more than you'd expect in NC. The roads are good enough but we don't have much in the way of snow removal equipment or salt trucks.

Friend 1 suggests staying with all-season tires but change them before I usually would so tread remains good
Friend 2 suggests snows but warns that road noise and ride will really suffer.

any opinions?

 

 

It is not necessarily the snow that will cause you problems in the winter, the colder tempertures will cause a loss of traction even on cleared roads. Once the snow gets piled high enough, you may get hung up on the snow and only higher ground clearance will get you going, so even a car with winter tires may not help.

As temperatures drop, tire rubber hardens, causing a loss of traction. Winter tires use different, softer rubber that is still soft enough in winter temperature conditions to offer good traction. The equalization point is said to be 7deg Celsius (45deg F); that is the temperature at which all-season tires and winter tires have the same traction. Above that temperature, all-season tires are safer, but below that temperature, winter tires are safer, with greater traction.

Traction is especially important when it comes to braking, even if you have FWD or AWD. FWD or AWD will get you going but only the traction available in your tires will help you stop in a shorter distance, since when you are braking, the wheels -- regardless of 2 front or rear, or 4 -- are not being driven.

So, if you drive into the colder areas of North America, especially if you are not used to winter driving, it is probably a good idea to mount snow tires.

That said, for me here in the heavily urbanized area of Southern Ontario, outside of the snowbelt areas, where I have lived all my life, and where we do not get much snow (and what we do get is very quickly cleared), I rely on all-season tires and do not mount winter tires. But I am used to driving in all sorts of weather we may get here, and while I will admit that my driving skills could do with improvement, I know my car and can sense -- through the steering wheel and through the seat of my pants -- when road conditions change and change my driving accordingly.

 

Even though will make difference. Winter tires have different rubber composition which stays soft giving good traction.
At 6 deg. C regular tires start getting harder. All cars in my family are AWD, yet we have winter tires on them in the winter.
In my mind there is no such thing as too much safety.

 

The biggest issue here (besides not having snow removal equipment) is being surrounded by inexperienced drivers who slam on the brakes after they've lost traction. I learned to drive in the Hudson Valley, had a car at schools in Syracuse and Schenectady, and lived for a few years in Westchester County. My wife has a similar snow pedigree so we're ok but our daughters are not. We're relieved that our mountain-school daughter doesn't drive.

 

I'll have to see if any of the local tire places will store winter tires.

 

Snow tires, like all-season tires, are not equally good performers in all weather conditions. I've had dedicated snow tires that were so good I could plow snow with the front of my car. I've had some that were really poor. Same goes for all-season tires. I've had some with surprisingly good snow handling traction and others that were like riding a toboggan. The Tire Rack website maintains a huge resource for comparing tires and will point out just where your tires rank in snow and ice traction, wet and dry traction as well as quietness, tread life and several other categories.

IME, the best snow tires are way better than the best all-season tires in snow and icy conditions. Doing the seasonal changeover is the route I chose when I lived in WI. It kept me out of trouble and I can count at least two avoided accidents that they saved me from.

 

Now there is another breed of tires called "all weather tires" Some of this is getting good reviews from the users.
I believe Michelin makes them too now. I live in Alberta where winter has cold, warm, snow, ice making road conditions
real treacherous at times. We always have two sets of tires/rims for every car in the family. Tire rack has many good choices of
many different tires.

 

Remedial warning: Are rims the same as wheels? Meaning to have 4 snow tires I would have to buy 4 new Lexus alloy wheels? Is it hard on the tire to be mounted/unmounted twice a year?

 

Yes, but you live in Alberta where sub zero temps are part of life for a significant portion of the year.

OP is in North Carolina, a different climate and may be facing snow in the mountains a week or few days of the year.

 

Yes, rims are the same as wheels.

What is recommended here is to buy a complete set of 4 winter tires and mount them on after-market steel wheels, and then just change to the appropriate set for the season. The steel wheels are to avoid the expense, effort and risk of tire damage from having to mount and remount tires twice a year; it also saves your Lexus alloy wheels from corrosion damage (from winter salt).

 

With the ES, having a second set of wheels for winter tires would also mean the added expense of buying a second set of tire pressure monitor sensors and having them programmed properly to work with the TPMS of the ES. I believe that the second set of sensors would have to be cloned from the set that is already on the original wheels because the TPMS of the ES can only work with one set of pressure sensors. For some Lexus models, including my GX, the TPMS can be paired with 2 sets of pressure sensors, but that is not the case with the ES.

The alternative would be to go without the tire pressure sensors on the wheels used with the winter tires, but that would mean, not only not getting the pressure readout on the information display but, also, living with a warning light on the dash through the winter.

 

The problem is the steel rims look terrible (at least the cheaper ones). It's pretty common where I live for people to have those on their cars in winter with all the snow and slush on the roads, but if you are someone who likes the look of your Lexus you may find them terrible looking. They end up rusting after a number of years.

Here's a typical set of them (this was from a buy and sell web page)

PS-these are the cheap type and many, many people in my area use them. People don't care what their car looks like in winter.

 

Is mounting a tire hard on it?