To be fair, the most efficient mode of transportation is cycling by far. I wonder if bike tires also contribute to this.
Bikes cause thousands of times less damage to streets so I wouldn’t be surprised if they also wear less.
The wear rate should be proportional to the weight of the system (car plus cargo and passsengers, bike plus cargo and riders), maybe with some correction factors for things that affect wear rate like knobbiness.
Since bikes weigh a couple orders of magnitude less on average, the amount of tire wear material should also be a couple orders of magnitude less.
Edit: other lemmyer said wear is proportional to weight to the 4th power and that may be correct. I vaguely recall that from school now that they mentioned it.
should be proportional to the weight of the system
It’s that really true? Wear to the roads is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight so I would never have predicted a linear relationship.