Originally Posted by
ThermionicScott
If tire wear were strictly due to load, it should be in proportion to the load. A road bike is usually, what, 40% in front and 60% in rear? Have you ever worn through the tread of a tire that stayed on the front its whole life?
A rear tire doesn't need to be slipping/skidding for the rubber to wear off due to abrasion, I'm confident that it happens to some extent whenever you apply additional power to accelerate. A front tire, on the other hand, just rolls on the ground unless you're in the process of crashing...
True. The torque to the rear tire does apply some deformation and extra wear - most evident on treaded tires, but happens to all of them. I've done some fairly fast riding on mountain bike tires on pavement, and the tread squirm is very evident.
The weigh argument is less relevant. With my tandem, I still get no wear on the front, in spite of the extra load. My ebike is the basically the same weight as my road bike, just with 2x the power output. And yeah, the weigh balance of my road bike is more like 45/55, so weight isn't the overwhelming factor.