That Volkswagen looks interesting though. Not a fan of the skinny tyres but as an aerodynamicist I have to say it looks pretty reasonable. Back's still not perfect though and they could probably improve it a few percent with wheel covers.
Skinny tires are preferable due to less road friction. They provide the same traction as fatter tires if you reduce the weight of the car. Double win: less road friction and less weight = same traction but allows for two factors which are increasing efficiency.
Wider tyres + Lower weight = Better traction
For the few percent you save I'd rather have a car that can brake and turn extremely well. The 3-5% you might get on fuel efficiency seems tempting, but believe me when you've just hit someone's bumper/dog/child it won't seem like such a great idea.
Your a fool, Take a 1lb car, With whatever fucking bigwide wheels you want, And you wont even beable to drive with all that spinning out you'll be doing.
YOU NEED WEIGHT TO APPLY POWER TO THE ROAD
Could someone just slap down the laws of math that show how "traction" works? so that we dont have a bunch of stupid bickering over tires.
were trying to talk about ecenomical effeciency for the enviroment by building electric(style) cars
It's not exactly difficult maths to work out that a greater contact patch is capable of producing greater friction (and hence greater lateral load for example).
Yes you end up with less traction per unit surface area of the contact patch due to lower loading on each section, but under real-world conditions with real materials the relationship is non-linear (whereas the increase in lateral load due to excess weight is) and as a result you're better off with the greatest possible contact patch area (read - wider wheels) on a dry surface.
The only situation where this isn't true is on a wet surface, as a wider tyre will be less likely to dig in, particularly if the tread blocks are quite large.
This is also why rally snow tyres are typically very narrow.
Yes, weight helps you put down power, but with the right suspension and tyre setup any road car can realistically be manageable. Besides, I don't think "MOAR POWER" is the aim of "green" vehicles
I very much doubt you'll be drifting a 235Mpg VW in the dry
, On that note i wonder how well it would perform on sand 
