Source?
All the studies I’ve read (and my experience) show that narrower tires and higher pressures improve economy. Less traction and less ride comfort are the tradeoffs, respectively.
GCN has a number of videos on this subject: https://youtu.be/jTZfrBVr5pQ?si=M5v6KP5ZZ9ZU5MXz
https://youtu.be/AK5KLvrzrb4?si=aMcYxYnWi9poZ8SA
And here is some technical data from SRAM: https://www.sram.com/globalassets/publicsites/cms-campaign-pages-not-story-pages/zipp/totalsystemeffeciency/pdf-downloads/tse-explained2.pdf
Basically new data includes vibration losses which get larger as pressure increases. There’s a sweet spot to balance between rolling resistance (which decreases with pressure) and vibration (which increases with pressure). So when you mention ride comfort as a trade off, it actually has a much larger effect than you might imagine.
Thanks for the videos and the PDF, but they are all bicycle related.
A car has a whole sophisticated subsystem dedicated for absorbing vibrations (the suspension), so I’m not sure the results can be applied there…
Oh I was only addressing this:
Road bicycles like the ones used in the Tour de France use pressures in the 120-140 psi range,