Big tyres have lower rolling resistance due to minimal carcass deflection / hysteresis, so once you get over the inertia they just keep rolling.
True
It’s taken a long time for the roadcycling world to get over its skinny tyre obsession and expect it will take the same for the MTB world – particularly as skinny MTB tyres also have to push soft ground out the way.
Fat tires aren’t fast though, plenty of people have taken them to XC races for poops and giggles and not won. At best the fat tyres are “not as slow as they look”.
2.3″ might be faster than 1.9″, or 25c (or even 27c) might be faster than 23c, but you equally rapidly hit the point of tyres weighing more, and being less aero.
It’s all down to tyre development, back in the days when people talked about “safety bicycles” big tyres were a necessity because no one made small tyres that could take 100psi+. Then things swung one way towards 18-19mm tyres, because they were faster. Then tyres developed so that 23c’s were comfortable without a loss of speed, now a 25c tyre at 95psi rolls with less resistance than a 23c at 100psi. Likewsise offroad, 2.1″ was the upper limit for a long time because 2.3″ was just heavy and draggy.
TLDR; roadies aren’t idiots, fat tyres are still slow.