Hankook Winter Icept EVO2, with its stellar performance on snowy roads, and Hankook RS2, known for its superior handling on icy paths, are ready for the winter tire showdown. But who will be crowned the king of winter tires? Let’s find out!
Table of Contents
Quick Takeaway
Hankook Winter Icept RS2 excels in:
- Fuel Economy: With its longitudinally aligned ribs and a streamlined design, it exhibits lower rolling resistance and improved energy efficiency. Plus, it has better overall tread life.
- Fluffy Snow Performance: Thanks to its unique tread design, the tire efficiently scoops snow and maintains good snow-to-snow contact, creating amplified friction and traction for better grip.
- Hydroplaning Resistance: Its tread design allows for much easier flow of water out of the tread, offering better resistance to hydroplaning.
Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 excels in:
- Ice Performance: Outpaces its counterpart with a shorter average braking distance and subtly faster acceleration on icy terrains, thanks to a tread design with detailed biters and abundant siping.
- Dry Traction: Its central longitudinal rib ensures superior connectivity and shorter braking distances, thus providing more steadfast road contact.
- Wet Traction: Its dual siping design reduces slippage, providing better grip on wet surfaces.
Areas for Improvement:
- Hankook Winter Icept RS2 could improve its performance on icy surfaces and dry traction, given its design of larger tread voids, scarce notches, and less aggressive sipes.
- Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 could benefit from an enhanced design for better performance on fluffy snow and improved hydroplaning resistance.
Fuel Economy
The fuel economy of a tire is intricately tied to its ability to provide traction and its overall weight. These are areas where the Hankook Winter Icept RS2 could benefit from some refinement.
Due to its increased weight and wider tread voids, the tire experiences more flexing of its lugs during maneuvers such as cornering, braking, and accelerating.
As a result, the weight distribution is spread over a smaller surface area, causing each lug to bear more pressure. This additional pressure leads to a higher expenditure of energy.
The flexing or bending of the lugs ends up consuming extra energy, which adversely affects the fuel efficiency of the tire.
On the other hand, the Hankook Winter Icept RS2, equipped with longitudinally aligned ribs and a streamlined design, exhibits lower rolling resistance values.
In simpler terms, the lugs of this tire do not exert as much force against the road. The compact tread structure efficiently channels energy towards propelling the entire tire forward instead of bending individual blocks. This results in improved energy efficiency.
Furthermore, this design attribute contributes to the tire’s better overall tread life.
Verdict: The Hankook Winter Icept RS2 wears down at a slower rate while providing greater miles per gallon, making it a favorable choice in terms of fuel economy.
Ice Performance
In the harsh reality of icy terrains, the Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 emerges victorious, confidently outpacing its counterpart with an impressive 7-feet shorter average braking distance and demonstrating subtly faster acceleration.
Moreover, the tire also offered faster handling times on laps (it was a whole second faster on average).
The Hankook Winter Icept RS2’s weaker performance on icy surfaces is anchored in its design. The tire, with its larger tread voids and scarce notches, is ill-prepared to grapple with the challenges of icy roads.
A lack of multi-angled siping cripples its performance further, especially during handling, with fewer notches translating to slower response times.
By contrast, the Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 displays pretty commendable traction in icy conditions, not only here, but compared to other famous snow tires out there as well, thanks to a tread design that artfully incorporates detailed biters and an abundance of siping.
These design elements, paired with a unique dual-angle design, significantly enhance grip and enable more effective braking and handling on icy surfaces.
Verdict: Hankook Evo 2 takes the lead, in both handling and directional icy grip.
Dry Traction
Dry traction is a critical component of tire performance, even when it comes to winter tires. And it hinges largely on the extent of rubber contact with the road, and is further divided in to two, the directional grip and the lateral traction.
Now when it comes to directional grip, which has to do with rolling straight, the Hankook Icept evo2 provides you with a more steadfast connection with the road, where its central longitudinal rib, ensures superior connectivity and shorter braking distances.
Meanwhile, the Hankook Winter Icept RS2’s design, featuring wider lateral tread voids, hinders the longitudinal movement of the blocks, thereby elongating braking times.
Furthermore, as for handling, the Hankook Winter Icept RS2’s additional weight and wider grooves prove to be a disadvantage, impeding its performance yet again.
As the tire corners, the weight shifts towards edges of the tread, and the RS2 with wider voids, and weight, pushes lugs to bend relatively more with the road, resulting in limited steering feedback, and with it, a compromised handling.
Verdict: Overall, in terms of both directional grip and handling, the Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 stands as the superior performer.
Wet Traction
The efficacy of wet traction is predominantly guided by the tread design and the rubber compound utilized in the tire. These elements greatly influence the tire’s capacity to cling to wet surfaces and defy hydroplaning.
In terms of grip on wet surfaces, the Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 has an edge, thanks to its dual siping design offering grip from multiple directions and thereby reducing slippage.
The Hankook Winter Icept RS2, equipped with less aggressive sipes, on the other hand, can’t quite match up, resulting in extended braking distances and handling times.
By less aggressive, I mean, that its sipes aren’t as interlocking internally, as its competitor.
Though the tire still offer better resistance to hydroplaning, nonetheless, where its swooping arms allow for much easier flow of water out of the tread.
Verdict: The RS2 offers better aquaplaning resistance, while the EVO2 offers better wet grip.
Fluffy Snow Performance
When it comes to snowy conditions, both tires put up a commendable performance. However, as we sift through just the fluffier snow, the Hankook Winter Icept RS2 starts to outshine its counterpart.
And its superior traction can be attributed to the tire’s unique tread design, where it’s directional pattern, allow for efficient snow scooping abilities.
This provides paddling on the snow, where snow is thrown backwards and a more powerful forward momentum is created.
Moreover, the tire also offers a better snow to snow contact with that too, effectively trapping and holding the fluffy particles within their interlocking grooves.
This generates a snowy buffer layer between the tire and the ground, playing on snow’s propensity to bond better with itself than with rubber. The end result is an amplified friction and traction, allowing for better grip on snowy surfaces.
In contrast, the Hankook Winter Icept EVO2 exhibits a more minimalist approach, sporting a continuous central rib and lacking the interlocking groove structure. Consequently, it falls short in gathering snow, granting its competitor the upper hand in fluffy snow performance.
Verdict: The Hankook RS2 offers better fluffy snow traction.
To Sum Up
In conclusion, both tires display strengths in different areas. So the ideal choice would depend on the driver’s predominant driving conditions and specific needs.
The RS2 excels in fuel efficiency and resisting hydroplaning, while the EVO2 performs better on icy surfaces, dry traction, and wet grip.
In fluffy snow conditions, the RS2 demonstrates superior traction.
