Dan4USC

My 2015 Q5 3.0T Premium Plus will be needing new tires. I am leaning towards Pirelli's Scorpion Verde All Season. Tire size: 235/55/19.
I live in southern California where there's not much wet weather. Most of my driving is highway.
I'd appreciate hearing from members who have experience driving their Q5 with these tires. Or other brands such as Michellin, Bridgestone.

carkarl

We have Scorpion Verde in 235/50 R18 on our Q3. I would say our experience matches the tirerack.com scoring pretty well and we're satisfied with them. We only have about 15k miles on them, so cannot report on how they go with age.

We're in westside LA but like to take our Q3 on roadtrips to mountains, up north, etc. They are quiet and comfortable for cruising and have plenty of dry and wet traction for how we drive it. They impressed me with a couple panic stops in the rain. One thing I have noticed is that braking performance in snow/ice conditions is a bit worse than my previous Dunlop and Michelin all-season tires (on an older A4). Other wintry handling seemed fine.

The character of the tires changes pretty quickly with pressure. I feel they are too soft around 32-33 PSI, making turn-in feel a little mushy. Around 38+ PSI they are noisy and the Q3 starts to feel a little too light on its feet. So, I tend to let them slowly drop to 34-35 PSI and pump them back to around 36-37 PSI to keep a happy medium. For the Q3, the recommended pressures in the manual are about 32-42 for light to full loads.

Dan4USC

CarKarl

Thanks for the information. At 15K miles on your Q3 with the Pirellis, how much tread life is left by your estimation. Is this a 30 000 mile tire under normal operation-hwy/city driving?

J. Patterson

Dan4USC

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the Pirellis, Contis, etc.
I purchased my Q5 this past September from a BMW/MINI dealer in Monrovia, CA. The car had 4 Goodyears on it but the left rear was below safety minimums. The service department replaced it with a new tire. Unfortunately, they replaced it with Falkon....fml...completely different tread pattern. With my left front Goodyear almost at the limit of replacement, it's time to get a) 3 new Falkons or 4 new Pirellis or similar.
I appreciate your useful information!

carkarl

I parked in the sun today to get a good look at the front tires. I didn't have any measuring scale with me, but based on the shadow lines, the tread left above the wear bar is probably 3-4 times the thickness of the wear bar. I don't remember how they were initially 1.5 years ago, so I am not sure what fraction has been consumed.

TBH, I don't think about tread life too much. It has been at least 15 years since I've replaced a set of tires due to wearing them down. More recently, it's been replacing tires that were too old by the calendar, buying a new set due to one being non-repairable, or replacing cars for other reasons...

Damon@tirerack.com

I've had the very same tire on my Q5. They were very good the first 60% of their life, and then one went out of round. I had to shave and replace it out of warranty. Until then they were fairly quiet. Wear and wet traction was fine. Slipped a bit in ice, but admittedly I am partial to snow tires in very cold weather.

StopSign

Just warrantied a set. They are awesome is dry and rain - the day after I put them on I did four hours in downpour and never doubted them. We'll see how the new set does. I should say they were at exactly 10k miles today when I took them off and no obvious sign of wear whatsoever, and I don't drive them gently. I have no doubt they'd make 50k miles on the Q5.