Goodyear Dunlop hosts labelling speed dating event in Luxembourg

Goodyear Dunlop has used a ‘Speed Dating’ approach to explain the tyre development process and offer additional information relating to the new EU Tire Label to top technology and motoring journalists from around Europe. But the key message was, as we heard from several manufacturers as Essen just a few weeks ago, that the EU Tire Label will highlight a tyre’s performance in three areas while leading manufacturers such as Goodyear Dunlop analyzes over 50 criteria during development.

At the event held at Goodyear’s Innovation Center in Luxembourg on 3 July, journalists were invited to experience the key areas of the complex tyre development process. They met tyre development engineers through a process similar to ‘Speed Dating’ that will see them pass from one expert to the next with the option of selecting a topic at the end to obtain additional information on. 

Journalists had the chance to meet experts from areas such as product marketing, tyre design, compound, construction, tyre evaluation and industrialization and manufacturing. They visited science labs, saw tyre building and curing process as well as going out on the track to experience real tyre testing and witness the wet grip and rolling resistance performance differences between a high graded tyre and a low graded tyre as highlighted on the new EU Tire Label.

As Jean Pierre Jeussette, general director of the Goodyear Innovation Center in Luxembourg explained: “We take journalists through the key steps in the tyre development process to explain, illustrate and communicate the challenges we face whilst developing high performing tyres. We also want to explain the impact of the new EU label. We are convinced the label will help consumers to make better-informed purchase decisions. The label, however, highlights only three performance criteria versus more than 50 performance criteria we analyze at Goodyear Dunlop.”