To make the right choice, you should familiarize yourself with the features of each of these types of tires, find out how they behave on the road in conditions of snow slurry, ice or mud. Knowing the structure and quality of the rubber will help you decide which tires to buy.
There is a lot of talk about what kind of tire cover to use during the snow and ice season. Every experienced car owner has his own opinion on this matter, which he considers to be the only authoritative one. Sellers of a product can tell so much about its unique properties that it is time to revise the laws of physics and chemistry. Therefore, the best advisor is objective analysis and your own mind.
To understand which tires are best, you first need to understand why slippage occurs on ice. The reason for this is the water film, which occurs due to friction and heating forces. In contrast to the summer period, when the tire also gets into a humid environment, but dries quickly, in winter a layer of ice forms on the rubber surface. The tread is smoother, harder and harder to catch on bumps in the road.
About Velcro
In fact, these tires do not have the property that the name suggests. Velcro is nothing more than competent marketing. They do not stick and nothing sticks to them either, these are ordinary friction (without spikes) tires, but slightly improved for movement in the cold season.
Studless tire manufacturers make rubber from a mixture with additives of high-quality plasticizers. It becomes softer, which allows the wheel to better follow the roughness of the road. Velcro uses exactly this principle of tire patency: they are softer than studded ones and squeeze liquid out of the grooves faster, preventing it from freezing.
About "thorns"
The tread of modern studded tires is multilayer. To make its blocks harder, and the area in contact with the road - soft, the inner layer is made hard, and the outer - plastic. Outwardly, all studded tires appear to be the same, but in reality there are different treads. One thing unites them: the spikes are made of a tougher rubber than the inner layer of the tire.
Operational issues
On icy conditions, the studded ones have an undeniable advantage: they know how to "dig" into the ice, enhancing traction. But where there is no ice, the spikes prevent the rubber from pressing firmly against the road surface, thereby reducing the area of much-needed contact. If the frost in the region of residence is more than -20, it means that the ice on the roads becomes very strong and the effectiveness of the thorns decreases, since they can no longer stick into it.
In this case, the best choice is Velcro, since nothing prevents them to improve contact with the road. In severe frosts, such tires begin to "work" better, since a water film from heating strong ice practically does not appear. For this reason, the coefficient of friction increases. But during the thaw, the thorns have the advantage again. Taking into account the region of residence, weather and road conditions, each motorist must decide for himself which choice of tires will be optimal for him.
