OK - I read this entire thread through yesterday and have been giving this a lot of careful consideration before posting this reply.
Tyre wear is a very difficult thing to compare especially across different brands of tyre fitted to different brands of vehicle. There must be literally 100's of variables at play given that scope.
But...
Bear with me while I work this through. I used to run a Seat Ibiza 1.9TDI 130BHP that ran on Bridgestone and then Vreidestein tyres. I could get 40,000 miles out of the front tyres using either brand and the rears would go for at least double that.
I now run an A3 2.0TDI 170BHP that came out of the factory on Pirelli P-Zero Rosso's. Driving the same commute to work as I did in the Seat with the same driving style I've only seen 25,000 miles out of the front tyres and even that was pushing it as the centre of the tyre had gone bald before I noticed and got them changed pronto - perhaps I should have changed at 20,000 miles instead.
So, given my directly comparable tests I could go shouting and ranting back to my Audi dealer saying that this new car chews up tyres twice as fast as my old car from the same overall group. There MUST be a design flaw in the 8P Audi chassis/ suspension setup! Add to that the rears on my A3 are now down to 3mm after 40,000 miles.
But lets look at the facts...the A3 is heavier than the Ibiza, and by quite a bit I should think (thicker body panels, more gizmos, slightly bigger engine, etc). This will put more stress and wear on the tyres. The A3 has more torque than the Ibiza and therefore will put more stress and wear on the tyres. The tyres themselves are Pirelli Rosso's which are fantastically grippy but this means they are also fantastically soft, so they will wear quicker then my old Bridgestones or Vreidesteins.
Taking all of the above into account I accept that I'll only see 50% of the life of the tyres on my A3 than I used to see on my Seat. Yes, I was gutted when I had to shell out £200 for 2 new tyres after such a relatively short distance but once I thought it through I concluded that this is the price you pay for a bigger, heavier more performant car.
So, lets get right back on topic and apply the same logic to the Q7. Previous posters have compared the wear rates on the tyres fitted to the Q7 with the wear rates on Transit vans and HGVs; but this isn't comparing like with like. Yes the Q7 does have dimensions and weight very similar to a small transit van but have you seen the tyres they fit to transit vans!? And more over have you driven a transit van? I have and it drives exactly like it looks - a heavy high sided thing that would far rather go in a straight line than turn a corner and rolls massively when it does turn. Furthermore people on here have compared the Q7 to Land Rovers, Land Cruiser Amazons and the like. Have you seen the tyres fitted to those things? I've been looking at all such large cars on my 85 mile trip from Winchester to Bristol this morning and the tyres on ALL of them wouldn't look out of place on a transit van; whereas the tyres on most Q7's I've seen wouldn't look out of place on a saloon car.
Van and truck tyres are high sided and made of much tougher compounds than saloon cars tyres, especially the lower profile "sporting" brands made my Michelin, Pirelli, etc. and therefore will last for several 10's of thousands of miles. These vehicles are built to do their job as safely as possible with driving performance and "fun" coming a distant last in design considerations.
Now I haven't been lucky enough to drive a Q7 however I understand this car drives pretty much like a saloon car would despite it being to all intents and purposes a very comfortable van. So the design direction here is the opposite of that of a van.
Lets pretend I double the weight of my A3 and raise it up to get it to something near the Q7, and then I play around with the suspension/ toe/ camber/ caster/ etc. so that it drives pretty much the same as it did before the weight and height gain...do you think I'd still get 25,000 miles out of my super soft pirelli saloon car tyres? I'd count myself lucky if I saw 10k out of them. Also, imagine that all my tweaking left the car "standing on it's tiptoes" running mainly on the outside edge of the tyres...all that weight and stress on such a narrow strip of rubber...hmmm....
So, clearly, to get a heavy, tall car to drive like it isn't a heavy tall car some compromises have to be made. Driving performance and fun can't be compromised otherwise what is the point of the Q7? Instead the designers will have had to strike a careful balance between making the car feel smaller than it is and wear and tear on some components.
Sorry for the long post but the overall impression from these posts is that people are getting very emotive and forgetting what they are driving. It strikes me that Audi are being quite generous in replacing tyres for free (except where the car's setup has been proved to be wrong, in which case this is the least they can do) and I suspect they are doing this to aid goodwill and help people acclimatise themselves with the realities of driving this car.
Perhaps some of the Q7 owners on here could try fitting Ford Transit van tyres to their car? I'm sure they would see at least double the mileage out of those tyres but they'd likely need to slow down a bit for the corners!
It also seems that Frizz has posted the optimal settings as s/he is seeing decent tyre wear on the Q7 with the following setup:
"Dunlop sportmax 295/35 R21's which I run at 44F 49R and generally leave the car in automatic." This comment seems to have got lost among the rants - has anyone tried replacing their tyres with these Dunlop ones and running at these pressures?
