Bridgestone launches Coach-AP 001

Bridgestone has launched its first tyre fully dedicated to the coach segment, the Coach-AP 001. The tyre is designed to offer cost efficiency, comfort, and safety in dry and wet, wintery conditions alike, with high labelling scores for rolling resistance and pass-by noise. Minimising operational costs while ensuring the highest level of safety is a strong demand for coach fleets due to the stringent standards of the people transportation industry. Combined with increasingly strict European regulations in terms of CO2 emissions and noise, and ever-present demands for improved road safety, this results in a challenging market; Bridgestone’s latest tyre is designed to help fleets meet these challenges.

The new generation of coach tyres applies a low rolling resistance pattern, resulting in B grade fuel efficiency to help reduce CO2 emissions and total cost of ownership for fleet operations. Like with CO2 emissions, EU institutions are placing pressure on the automotive industry to reduce the noise produced by vehicles, following a regulation introduced in 2014. But, for coach fleets specifically, noise reduction is an even greater priority as it improves the comfort of passengers. The Coach-AP 001 was engineered with noise reduction in mind, achieving pass-by noise of 69 decibels.

Passenger comfort and safety are also addressed by the Coach-AP 001 tyre, which has been designed to deliver in all types of weather. The tyre has been awarded an EU label B grade in wet grip and achieves 3PMSF and M+S markings to be fully winter ready.

“Fleets today face greater challenges than ever before. But within that market, the people transportation segment also faces its own hurdles,” said Steven De Bock, director sales & operations commercial products at Bridgestone EMEA. “In the Coach-AP 001, we have developed a tyre that reduces the total cost of ownership for fleets and maximises comfort with no compromise on safety to help our fleet customers answer the challenges they face.”

Predictive maintenance ready

Bridgestone’s 2019 portfolio, including the Coach-AP 001 tyres, will be made traceable with electronic tagging system RFID (radio-frequency identification). As Bridgestone’s digital mobility solution portfolio for fleets – now including Total Tyre Care, FleetPulse, and, following Bridgestone’s acquisition of TomTom Telematics, Webfleet – continues to evolve, the implementation of RFID will bring added value to customers looking to benefit their tyres with connectivity and predictive maintenance.

Bridgestone Coach-AP 001 – master size 295/80R22.5 – will be launched in October 2019. All Coach-AP 001 tyres, developed at the Bridgestone’s European R&D centre in partnership with our fleet customers, are manufactured in Europe.