Bridgestone Europe is best-known as a supplier of high performance tyres, thanks largely to its presence in Formula 1, but the company has reported that it is gaining OE business in all sectors of the car market, from micro cars to off-road vehicles. The latest OE successes for Bridgestone include the Peugeot 307 and Land Rover Freelander.
Pirelli P7 high performance tyres are to be OE on the new BMW 5 series, in sizes 205/60 R16 and 225/55 R16. This is the latest collaboration between the two companies, which has seen Pirelli P6000 Powergy tyres as OE on the BMW 3 series, P Zero Rosso tyres for the 7 series and the run-flat Eufori@ for the Mini.
The Morgan Motor Company in the UK has chosen Yokohama A539 high performance tyres as OE fitment for its 4/4 and +8 sports cars. Tyre sizes are 195/60 R15 88H for the 4/4 and 205/60 R15 95V and 205/55 R16 93W for the +8. The design of the 4/4 has not been radically changed since its launch in 1936, featuring wooden frames, hand-made metal parts and a 1.8 litre engine. The +8 is a more powerful version, with a 3.9 litre engine.
The high performance tyre market is traditionally the area where good margins are to be made. It is also a growing sector, with an increasing number of new cars routinely fitted with tyres that, a few years ago, would have been reserved for sports cars. Wheels are getting bigger and profiles getting lower – where will it all end?
Cars are getting faster and the high performance tyre sector is one of the fastest-growing parts of the market. Seemingly most of the tyre manufacturers are concentrating their efforts on this sector and reviewing their product mix accordingly. Once only a few manufacturers were active in the hp and uhp segment, now seemingly everybody boasts a performance offering. We take a look at what’s available.
Bridgestone has unveiled a new tyre production system which automates the entire manufacturing process from initial materials processing to final inspection of finished tyres. Called Bridgestone Innovative and Rational Development (BIRD), the system consists of three elements. First is Bridgestone’s Automated Tyre Manufacturing Synchronised System (ATMSS) technology covering materials processing to vulcanisation. Second is Automated Inspection Modular System (AIMS) for automatic inspection of finished tyres and the third element is the Flow Oriented Approach (FOA) implementation of autonomous information processing for managing the system. Among the advantages claimed for BIRD include flexibility, quality improvements, smaller plants (a unit can produce up to 350,000 car tyres a year), occupying one-third of the space of a conventional plant, smaller lot production and reduced environmental impact.
Nokian Tyres has developed two new high performance summer tyres, tailored for Central Europe, the USA and Nordic countries, and which will go on sale next spring. The NRVi is a V-rated tyre available in 19 sizes and features an info field near the bead area – the tyre fitter marks the field with the correct inflation pressure for the driver’s convenience. The second tyre, the NRY, is Z-rated (maximum speed 300 km/hr) and comes in six sizes, which correspond to OE sizes of many luxury cars.
Since 1999 the trend in car sales in Europe is downwards. If one million cars are sold a year, that is five million tyres which will not supplied as original equipment. But luxury and premium class cars, sporty cars and luxury SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) were not included in the negative trend and in some niches sales even rose. High performance vehicles need high performance tyres. Whereas standard tyres with a T speed rating have lost market share over recent years, tyres with speed ratings H and higher have increased market share. The average horse power of the car parc in Europe is rising year by year. People talk about fuel saving cars, but buy more and more vehicles with more powerful engines. Within the car tyre segment, the sub segment of high performance (hp) and even ultra high performance (uhp) tyres is growing; this part of the market is very dynamic. But changes are on the horizon: until now the flood of newly introduced upper class cars made it necessary to fit hp or uhp tyres, but now this market seems to be saturated. On the other hand more and more middle class and even compact cars have engines allowing top speeds of more than 200 km/h – and also need this type of tyres. And the higher the car segment, the longer the cars “live”. Now all these cars introduced in the 90s need replacement tyres. In the year 2000 in Europe 19 percent of all replacement tyres had the speed ratings V/W/Y/Z, in 2005 it will be 33 percent. These cars need high value tyres a second and a third time and this means an optimistic outlook for tyre dealers. Especially if we consider that the ties between drivers and the car dealers will become weaker and weaker year by year. The drivers will no longer buy the tyres from the BMW or Jaguar dealer but from a tyre dealer. In original equipment the demand in hp and uhp tyres will also improve but not as dramatically as in the aftermarket. But there is a new trend which is also positive: more and more cars will be fitted with runflats. And because these tyres are more expensive than “normal” tyres the first introductions happen on upper class vehicles. Most runflats are also hp and uhp tyres because every new invention in car production is offered first in this segment. Remember ABS, ESP or airbags. If a car does not need a fifth tyre because of being fitted with runflats that will be compensated for by a much better-performing (and also more expensive) tyre.
Ultra High Performance Tyres (uhp) are not only for super sports cars nor high performance marques, but also for the top models of volume car makers. They are the biggest customers of the European uhp tyre manufacturers nowadays. From the middle of the decade, uhp OE sales begin to slacken, but aftermarket sales continue to grow. At the moment the OE sector accounts for the majority of uhp tyre sales, but this will turn around in a couple of years. Nowadays, 16″ tyres are usually the smallest in the uhp market; 17″ and 18″ increase, 19″ and 20″ are still comparatively rare. 55 and 50 series aspect ratios are the usual sizes, but tyres as low as 30 series can be fitted. Looking ahead, the V speed rating looks set to explode. In W/Y/Z speed ratings, the premium tyre manufacturers dominate, but for V-rated tyres, the not-so-well-known brands can get a slice of the cake. In 1999, sales of V, W, Y and Z-rated tyres in Western Europe were in excess of 20 million units and by 2005, this will be doubled. In volume terms, Germany will be the biggest market – even today, one in three uhp tyres sold in Europe is bought by a German. But Germany is the leader only on numbers sold; when it comes to uhp tyres as a percentage of the tyre market as a whole, last year this sector accounted for 30% of the German market. The leader in percentage terms was Switzerland, with 38%.
Michelin wants to capture half of the global O.E. market for high performance tyres. To help achieve this the company is counting on its C3M automated manufacturing system, now in place at seven plants around the world.
Bridgestone’s tyre factory at Poznan, Poland, has been officially opened. It is the company’s sixth tyre factory in Europe and one of 46 across the globe. It produces 10,000 Bridgestone and Firestone tyres daily, mainly high- and ultra-high performance tyres, with a workforce of 540. The factory is a joint venture with state-owned Stomil Poznan SA.
Japanese producer Yokohama’s high performance tyres received top scores in the latest competitive tyre tests in the German motoring press. Magazines auto, motor & sport, sport auto and rallye racing emphasised the extraordinary performance of the “AVS Sport” and the “TW 1” on wet and dry surface.
Pirelli has released first details of a new manufacturing system, called MIRS (Modular Integrated Robotised System). The company is investing 250 million Euros over the next five years. A MIRS plant that can produce one million tyres a year would employ 104 people in five shifts, would occupy 3,500 sq. m. and the investment cost (excluding the building itself) would be around 45 million Euros. According to Pirelli, MIRS reduces the steps of the tyre building process from the previous 14 to only three. Instead of passing the tyres “from hand to hand” in the production process, the MIRS work is done by robots. Tyre type and size are fed into the computer at the beginning of production, the rest is done by the computer alone, without human interference. MIRS is therefore a kind of mini-factory with an extremely high degree of flexibility. The factory can be built anywhere where there is a market. The technology, which Pirelli does not disclose and is not prepared to share with a competitor, not even under licence, was developed by Pirelli’s research and development department in co-operation with Italian universities and the Ministry of Research and Science. A pilot plant will start work in the Bicocca factory near Milan at the end of June 2000. The Italiens claim a manufacturing cost reduction of 25 p.c. for the MIRS method compared with the traditional way, and Pirelli boss Tronchetti Provera plans to manufacture three million tyres by the new method by the year 2003, or 15 p.c. of its high and ultra-high performance tyres. If all goes to plan, it will be possible to produce five million “MIRS tyres” within five years.
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