I Swapped My 2023 Toyota Prius' 47lb 19-inch Wheels for 35.5lb 16-inch Ones, Already Seeing 59-65 MPG in 45°F Minnesota Weather

Um, I didn't see anything about recalibrating the speedometer for the smaller wheel size (maybe he did and it wasn't mentioned). Without recalibrating those numbers are not going to be accurate and could actually pose a danger by the speedometer not giving a factual reading when driving.

I think they look good. I drive a Niro PHEV and really wanted a sunroof. Passed on that for 16s and glad I did because of larger wheels with the sunroof. SX v EX.

When I see big wheels and low profile tires I don't think high performance or sports car, I think ghetto. I think '72 Impala jacked up with oversized chrome rims. I think it's a stupid fashion statement that in most cases is not in the driver's best interest. I have 17s all around on my e85 Z4. Great ride and the cornering performance is barely affected. Okay, so I lost my ghetto street cred. I can live with that.

Are the smaller wheels/tires a different diameter than the originals? Did he have to recalibrate his speedometer/odometer to compensate or is it based off GPS info in new cars instead of wheel speed?

Is the diameter of the wheel the same with the new tires and rims? The distance traveled will be affected if it's not, affecting the MPG numbers.

I wouldn't worry about the asthetics, Prius are some of the ugliest cars on the road already, can't make them much worse.

Conspicuously absent from this article are the before and after tire sizes. I doubt the 16's have the exact same circumference as the 19's. Unless the Prius's computer allows for changing the tire size, then all mileage calculations will be off. Take this car onto the highway and check the speedometer error against a GPS to confirm it.

I would have gone full retro with a gold BBS look in 15 inches.

Honestly both wheels look just fine. Bigger sidewalls, smaller wheels, hey most vehicles do that every winter where snow/winter tires are used. My brand new Hyundai Tucson PHEV Ultimate looks fantastic with its stock 19 wheels however they are put away till spring and the new 17 inch Goodyear snows and steel rims look fine enough for winter. The vehicle still looks great.
The Prius is now a fantastic looking car and the base model has smaller wheels as stock, and gets the better fuel milage for it. The 2016 Prius design, every time we see one go by my wife or I usually say there goes the ugly Prius! We actually test drove a 2024 Prius Prime before buying the Tucson and it was a very nice auto, just too small for us and lacking the AWD we wanted. The RAV4 Prime was too expensive, kind of oldish now and a year plus wait! Love the 2025 Tucson PHEV so far!

You must realize that changing the wheels from 19 inch down to 16 inch just changed the accuracy of the speedometer and odometer. The car was computer calibrated for the 19 in. wheels. Now with a smaller wheel, the speed and distance are no longer accurate due to the fact that the tires now make more revolutions to travel the same distance.

Unless you had your car reprogrammed to the new tire size Your data is false. You would have to use a much bigger tire to keep the same proportions. I know this isn't the correct math, but I'll give a simple example. If you have a 19-in tire, it may be something like 38 in around the outside. Meaning one spin of the tire goes 38 in. Now if you lower that to a 16-in tire then the outside of the tire would be something like 32 in. So one rotation of the tire only takes you 32 in. Since the computer is originally programmed to think one rotation of the tire goes 38 in your computer is being tricked into. Thinking you are going further than you actually are.

This is a ridiculous article, if you're serious about reducing weight to improve range you'd remove the back seat and passenger seat. Until viable renewable energy can be harnessed electric vehicles are a waste of resources, the battery has not changed in over 120 years no matter what it's made of so until these things change the electric car makes zero sense. Great goals to have but we'll have to wait for technology advancements to make it truly feasible.

Aren't the 16 inch tires heavier?

Another question is how much clearance is left between the brake calipers and the 16 inch wheels.

After reducing the wheel size from 19” to 16”, how did you determine the mpg? If you based the measurements on known distance between two locations, then your results may be valid. But if you relied on the car computer to give the mpg then, your results are incorrect. This is because vehicle speed and distance travelled is computed based on wheel rotational speed. With smaller wheel diameter, the car computers calibration became wrong and hence your mpg jumped.
You can verify this by driving between two road markers a known distance apart and compare that known distance against the trip meter or odometer reading. Your trip : odometer will indicate a distance longer than the known distance.

Doesn't changing the tire size affect the speedometer? I didn't see any mention of it.

I did a similar thing for my 2017 GEN4 touring model years ago. I replaced the larger wheels of the touring trimline with the smaller lighter aluminum wheels (used by the tech & base models), and the resulting mpg was very significant 5.5 to 4.3 L/100 km). In addition, the ride was much smoother as the suspension is not tuned for low profile tires in first place.

The WHOLE article is about whether it's worth the compromise to the looks of the car to gain the efficiency - and there's no pictures of the car before/after?
How did this pass by any sort of editing process?
Is this whole site equally amateur?
Wow - quite confidence killing.