Latin Tyre Expo delayed till October
The concurrent Latin Tyre Expo and Latin Auto Parts Expo events have been put back until 6-8 October 2021. Writing in a letter to dated 3 Ferbruary, the events’ organiser, Latin Expo Group, explained:
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The concurrent Latin Tyre Expo and Latin Auto Parts Expo events have been put back until 6-8 October 2021. Writing in a letter to dated 3 Ferbruary, the events’ organiser, Latin Expo Group, explained:
Automechanika Dubai 2021 has been moved to the end of the year and will now take place from 14 – 16 December 2021 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. According to the show’s organisers, Messe Frankfurt, the move follows contact with stakeholders and is a the result of the Covid-19 pandemic’s “unchartered territory”.
Pirelli’s “power is nothing without control” strapline is well-known and apt. But, as we move further into the era of electric vehicles, should we be thinking: speed-ratings mean nothing without considering torque? In July 2003 my predecessor Peter Gardner published “Let’s torque speed ratings”, an editorial article that followed suggestions from within the tyre business that we reconsider what we mean by those letter values so-often tagged onto the end of tyre sizes. The discussion was specifically prompted by Stephen Marsh (then of Stapleton’s Tyre Services) who made the point that the power transference properites of millennial engines is as important as the absolute speed capability of tyres. In other words, when recommending products, the tyre business should be just as concerned about a vehicle’s torque demands as its top-speed capability.
In December 2020 French group UTAC CERAM announced that it was buying British test specialists Millbrook, which also owns well-known tyre test centres such as Test World in Finland. The plan is to merge the two companies, creating “a market-leading group in vehicle testing, vehicle type approval and emerging technologies for autonomous, connected and electric vehicles”.
It is not easy for tyre businesses to take away something positive from the past year. In retrospect, Toyo Tires came to the conclusion: “2020 was anything but a glorious year for the tyre industry. A slump in new registrations and also double-digit declines in the replacement market business. There were no dealers and no manufacturers who did not have to struggle with losses in the past year.” Nevertheless, Toyo Tires Europe is starting the new year “confidently”, according to the Germany-based European headquarters of the Japanese tyre manufacturer.
Pirelli has introduced new Cinturato All-Season Snow Flake 2 and Cinturato P7 tyre ranges in a virtual event broadcast from Milan. The virtual launch also previewed the forthcoming Cinturato Winter, which will be released in time for the next winter season. As far as performance improvements are concerned, the new Pirelli Cinturato All-Season Snow Flake 2 (or Cinturato AS SF2 for short) stole the show, boasting a whopping 50 per cent increase in mileage performance compared with its predecessor.
Brand Finance normally releases its tyre brand ranking in March, but the analysts’ list of the top 500 brands in the world gives us a preview of what we will see in roughly a month’s time. Published at the end of January 2021, the latest Brand Finance report ranks companies according to their brand’s strength and monetary value. Michelin and Bridgestone are the only two tyre brands in the top 500 and it is clear that the competition between the two continues to heat up.
Versarien plc, which makes nanocompounds for tyre applications amongst other things, is was awarded a product development funding from the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), a part of the Ministry of Defence at the end of November 2020.
Versarien plc, the AIM-listed the advanced materials engineering group, announced on 7 January that it has appointed Dr Stephen Hodge as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr Hodge joined the company’s board with immediate effect.
The new TRA Pyrolysis Group held its first meeting on 26 January 2021 attended by 16 of the association’s members. The meeting identified a number of common interests and objectives ranging from feedstock monitoring, the clear need to influence future regulation governing pyrolysis operators as well as complex issues such as ‘end of waste’ status and planning constraints.
One of the biggest football clubs in the Czech Republic, SK Dynamo České Budějovice, has named Tomket Tires as its back of shirt partner. The latest investment comes shortly after Tomket Tires announced its partnership with another leading Czech team, FC Zbrojovka Brno. The two Czech football sponsorship moves see Tomket Tires return to the company’s historic roots by sponsoring teams at the forefront of Czech football in the same manner as it does other teams in the top five leagues in global football.
TyreWatch, the tyre monitoring technology company, is using the latest JOSAM Cam-aligner wheel alignment system to diagnose and correct mis-aligned vehicles which the company says, represent 33 per cent of the UK logistics industry.
Supplied by JOSAM’s UK distributor Automotive Equipment Solutions UK (AES UK) the JOSAM Cam-aligner is a compact, mobile system which uses patented camera technology together with the ‘centreline principle’ to determine the position of axles and individual wheels in relation to the square of the vehicle.
In the US The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and ConMet announced a strategic collaboration to create combined digital solutions that will “better connect commercial truck fleets to the health of their tyres and wheel ends”. Billed as leveraging big data and utilising predict analytics, ConMet’s existing SmartHub is positioned as a stepping stone en route to autonomous vehicle technology.
With data showing that 93 per cent of garages planned to remain open during lockdown 2.0, it is a minority view, but one Suffolk garage is appealing for another MOT extension similar to what was enacted during the first lockdown in spring 2020.
2020 provided a turbulent 12 months for the humble MOT. At the start of the year, the centralised testing conducted on the island of Ireland was thrown into disarray after faulty vehicle lifts were found on both sides of the border. It also raised questions about the wisdom of centralised approach in comparison of the de-centralised model used across Great Britain. Of course, all this took place while Covid-19 was still a Far Eastern problem. And yet, before the first quarter was out, national lockdowns had resulted in the deployment a six-month extension of the MOT renewal date, which had the knock-on effect of causing an MOT boom in the last quarter of 2020. The last cars to make use of the extension had their testing date deferred to the end of January 2021, so that complex chapter in the history of the MOT is now over. It also means that we have a chance to learn what happened. At the same time, the latest full-year 2019/2020 DVSA vehicle testing data has now been released, so we can also learn more about how last year’s projections compared with the end results in the months preceding the pandemic and what this might mean in terms of tyre demand.
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