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> Asphalt is a petroleum product,

Uhh, what? Not all roads are asphalt, tons aren't. But even then that's irrelevant. If I made the tire out of Vaseline would it have the same wear characteristics? After all it's also made of petroleum.

Road wear isn't just about the friction. A lot of it is the stresses of the road surface being squished into the ground and deformed. If you've ever seen a boat planing over the water, the road surface kind of wants to make a similar pattern but due to rigidity it can't quite do that. So the internal stresses of the system of the road surface are pretty radically different than the layers of a tire being stretched and pressed into an air bubble.




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