While both provide good dry traction, Yokohama is good in wet traction, gripping, and also comfortable. It offers very good steering responsiveness which helps maintain vehicle stability throughout the car’s speed range.
Yokohama Avid Ascend can be ranked among the upper-class tires owing to their noise-free and smooth handling.
These features of Yokohama tire better. Let’s discuss these features in detail.
Table of Contents
Overview – Yokohama Avid Ascend:
Yokohama Avid Ascend has a slightly asymmetric tread design, which consists of three ride zones.
These zones focus on dry grip, water evacuation, and wintertime traction.
Avid Ascend is available in T, H- or V-speed rated sizes ranging from 15-19 inches.
It is suitable for the riders of sedans, coupes, minivans, and crossover vehicles.
It offers great and noise-free handling on dry, wet, and snow traction and features long tread wear and low rolling resistance.
Key Highlights
- Adaptive three-Dimensional (3D) sipes.
- The tread pattern has cross grooves to evacuate water.
- Offers quiet ride because of different styles of tread blocks that cancels harmonic frequencies.
Overview – Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max:
Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max is a standard all-season tire company designed to enhance fuel economy for riders of all types of crossovers, coupes, minivans, and sedans while at the same time being more affordable in terms of price.
This fits 15-inch to 17-inch wheels and is available with speed ratings of T, H, and V.
Assurance Fuel Max has two unique tread zones, the Dry Tread Zone and the Wet Tread Zone.
These zones aim to improve stability on both dry and wet road surfaces, provide snow traction, and enhance tread life.
Yokohama Avid Ascend GT
Key Highlights
- It comprises of advanced technology of low rolling resistance.
- These tires provide less resistance by 27%
- Improves Fuel economy by 4%. It means that it will save 2600 mi worth of fuel when driven 65000 mi.
- Equipped with molecular level rubber tread compound. It also has a unique tread pattern.
The Yokohama Avid Ascend on the other hand is a touring tire that delivers comfortable and reliable all-season traction, responsive handling, long tread life, and good fuel economy.
It uses Yokohama’s advanced Orange Oil compound to offer increased grip, stability, and efficiency.
It also features BluEarth’s eco-friendly identification.
The chart given above compares the features of both the tires on the bases of car test results.
The properties wise comparison of these tires in given below:
What is traction like in both tires?
With the steering wheel, the Assurance Fuel Max won’t offer too much feeling, and it’s not very sensitive either.
With a set of these tires, one can’t get involved in driving, particularly on a twisty road.
However, that shouldn’t bother routine drivers.
The tire performs excellently for daily driving, especially in urban environments.
For the category, the traction it gives is outstanding and the grip is above average.
In addition, stopping distances are short enough for safe driving (98.50 ft from 50 mph to 0 mph), and the firmness on the highway is great.
Overall, in dry conditions, the Assurance Fuel Max is impressive, especially if the driver is spirited.
Nonetheless, for normal driving conditions, the tire offers a stable overall driving experience.
On the other hand, Yokohama offers very good handling to the drivers.
Traction is great, almost the same as the finest luxury grand-touring tires.
Also, the braking performance is remarkable.
Because of its advanced tread compound, Yokohama is very reactive in the corners and it instantly responds to the steering inputs.
It provides a pretty good grip. Its road-holding and straight-line stability are quite appreciable.
On highways, it is absolutely safe to drive at 70mph speed.
The thread compounds also enable Avid Ascend to perform well in cold weather with little less grip and traction.
The stopping distance is 91.40 ft. from 50 mph – 0mph.
Besides, it lowers the consumption and emission of fuel from the car due to its BluEarth technology.
What about Wet traction?
On wet roads, the Assurance Fuel Max easily begins to fall apart.
As compared to cheap alternative tires, Fuel Max is not bad but it is way behind the class-leading tires of the current age.
In wet weather, the tire undoubtedly reveals its age.
The stopping distance in wet traction is 125.5 ft. from speed 50 mph to 0 mph.
However, like dry traction, Yokohama Avid Ascend is pretty good on wet and slippery roads, especially when driving at moderate highway speeds.
Avid Ascend features Yokohama’s 3D Adaptive Sipes which offer more rigidity and increase wet and wintertime traction.
The tires make little-to-no noise even on overly wet highways.
The stopping distance is 144.80 ft in wet traction.
Snow and ice traction
Another field where the Fuel Max suffers is winter traction.
It offers good handling and braking over light snow at a lower speed.
But for harsh snowing weather, Assurance Fuel Max is not recommendable.
For that, one can look for modern tires that can provide better traction on snow.
On the other hand, Yokohama is good in mild winter with less amount of snow. It grants the best traction in lighter snow with good braking performance.
However, if one is looking for some tires for icy surface and deep snow, he should not go for Yokohama as it may entirely lose traction in these areas.
Hydroplaning Comparison
Hydroplaning, otherwise known as aquaplaning, is a risky driving condition occurring when a tire comes in contact with more water than it can scatter.
Consequently, excess water is pushed under the tire separating it from the surface of the road.
This results in loss of traction and power control, making steering and braking extremely difficult.
Hydroplaning can even make a car slide uncontrollably on a wet or slippery road.
Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max uses standard tread wear indicators (TWI) allowing drivers to monitor their tread depth and make sure it is sufficient for good traction.
Tires with good tread depths provide good hydroplaning resistance and braking on wet and slippery roads.
Fuel Max features a unique tread pattern with two distinctive zones, the Dry Tread Zone and the Wet Tread Zone.
The Wet Tread Zone uses Dual Aquachannel grooves that provide good water evacuation, enhanced hydroplaning resistance, and better traction and braking in the rain.
Overall, Assurance Fuel Max offers good hydroplaning resistance, though it does not have sufficient usable traction, making the braking distance longer than many premium tires.
On the other hand, Yokohama Avid Ascend has a tread design with three ride zones focused on dry grip, wintertime traction, and water evacuation.
It features cross grooves and four circumferential grooves that provide increased hydroplaning resistance by evacuating water from under the tire.
Rolling resistance/fuel efficiency
Simply put, rolling resistance is the friction between tires and the surface of the road.
The greater this friction is, the slower a car will go, and the more energy and fuel it will burn.
Low-quality tires, bad road condition, weight, speed, and tire pressure add to this friction and slow a car down.
To overcome this resistance, the car has to transmit energy and keep the wheel rolling.
Assurance Fuel Max prides itself on its advanced low-rolling-resistance technology. Goodyear used rubber developed at the molecular level to provide lower rolling resistance in Fuel Max tires.
Yokohama Avid Ascend also features low rolling resistance leading to significantly better fuel mileage.
Steering responsiveness
Yokohama Avid Ascend tires have an interlocking tapered center rib design which enhances surface contact and provides better steering responsiveness and increased vehicle stability throughout the speed range.
Fuel Max provides a good steering response but it has room for improvement.
Ride and noise comfort
The Assurance Fuel Max is perhaps one of the most comfortable tires, although it is over a decade old.
The consistency of the ride is great on the highway, and when you reach a pothole, it remains good.
But this is not true in the case of road noise.
The Fuel Max creates noise on the highway, particularly for a passenger all-season tire.
The new premium competition on the roads is much quieter.
On the other hand, Yokohama provides a quieter ride even at high speed and even for such a car that doesn’t have noise insulators.
It improves the refinement of the vehicle.
It offers a comfortable ride.
It tackles small imperfections on the road while the large potholes are tempered easily.
Off-road drive Comparison
Assurance Fuel Max is definitely not for off-road rides. It lacks traction and can easily damage the thread of the tire from rocks.
Also, Yokohama Acid Ascend GT is not the best option out there if one owns a crossover and want tires that will fit in extreme off-road conditions.
This tire is intended to be used only on proper roads, not in conditions that are off-road.
Its tread design may enable the rider to drive on a gravel road but it is not recommended.
But if you are on such a road, be careful with the grip because traction will be very less.
Treadlife Comparison
Goodyear Assurance claims to offer the best-in-class tread life.
It backs the tire for 65,000 miles; however, some users report lower than expected tread life.
Assurance Fuel Max tires have two steel belts inside, with a polyester body and nylon reinforcement.
These belts provide increased strength and durability.
On the other hand, Yokohama Avid Ascend offers a remarkably long 85,000-mile treadwear warranty.
The tread life is estimated to be 100,000 miles.
Conclusion
The Speed Test was done on 2011 BMW E92 328i Coupe with Fuel Max tires, the test results indicate that it offers good winter weather performance. But rider comfort and wet traction need to be improved. The test was conducted at 65mph, 50 mph and 40 mph.
While for Yokohama, 2012 BMW F30 328i Sedan was used which indicates that Yokohama offers a smoother and more comfortable ride but there’s the need to improve wet traction. The test was conducted at 65mph, 50 mph and 40 mph.
From this discussion, it is clear that Yokohama Avid Ascend is far better than Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max in terms of tread life, steering responsiveness, and traction.
