I’ve created myself a vehicle - a locomotive - which’s physical constrained static mesh wheels are set into motion with the “Add Relative Rotation”-node. I gave the wheels and the track a custom physical material which’s friction setting seems to be ignored. No matter how fast or slow the wheels spin - the locomotive slides only a few centimeters around, mostly when stopped after the wheels spun. I tried insanely high and low numbers for the friction setting but it changed nothing - it behaves like ice on ice.
The interaction of rolling friction and forward force on a vehicle is actually quite complex. The physics engine will not be able to handle this by simply spinning the wheels as that would make other simulation of simple interactions (ball bouncing) very expensive.
Because of this we have special support for vehicles which will do exactly what you’re trying to achieve. It gives you the ability to tweek the friction (and many other) values of the tires.
Check out release 4.2 which is coming soon, it will have official support for vehicles and should make this a lot easier to do.
For now you could fake this by applying a forward force on the locomotive.