As well as admitting that its “practices concerning tyre tests have not always…been in line with the sustainable approach of Nokian Tyres” and that it has made “mistakes”, Nokian has now explicitly implicated other tyre manufacturers in tyre test rigging.
Cooper Tire Europe launched its latest high performance SUV tyre, the Cooper Zeon 4XS Sport, at the Red Bull Ring in Austria last October with brand ambassador, David Coulthard in attendance.
Designed for medium and large SUV fitments, the 4XS Sport offers European label ‘A’ grade wet grip performance as one of its strongest points.
A successor to Nokian Tyres’ AA label-rated eLine will come to market this spring. The Nokian eLine 2 summer range repeats the prior model’s feat of achieving the top rating in the European tyre label’s wet grip and fuel efficiency categories, and is said to be the product of “nearly four years of development and extensive field testing” in Germany, Finland and Spain.
Giti Tire has launched its latest product, the GT Radial Savero SUV, which arrives in Europe to meet the growing demand in the SUV and CUV segments. The tyre was launched at an event in Barcelona, demonstrating the product’s suitability for fitment on a wide range of vehicles at the compact to medium end of the market.
Membat has announced that its Passion Run Flat tyre has passed European label test with flying colours, effectively launching the product for sale in the continent. According to the company, the Passion Run Flat tyre scored an impressive A-grade for wet braking performance, making it one of the first tyres to do so.
Following on from the second Kraiburg summit, Kraiburg Austria invited its Czech and Slovakian customers to a workshop at the end of September in Cerna Hora in the Czech Republic. During the even the retreading specialist shared its stance on various “pro-retread” campaigns and gave a status report on the ReTyre project, explaining the background behind the impending tyre labelling.
In mid-September the emissions hit the fan for VW. What began with an admission that half a million Golfs and Beetles were not showing the right emissions values in lab tests, quickly became a global scandal involving 11 million vehicles, disastrously affecting the group’s share price, resulting in the ‘restructuring’ of the firm’s global leadership and worst of all affecting confidence in both VW and the wider automotive and automotive testing industries.
Earlier in the month tyrepress.com reported on a bill introduced into the United States Senate that could pave the way for implementation of minimum tyre standards – effectively a US tyre label – and also reintroduce compulsory tyre registration in the USA. Yesterday the Senate passed the bill containing these proposals by 65 votes to 34. The bill also authorised funds for other highway, safety and transit programmes.
A bill calling for the introduction of minimum tyre performance standards and compulsory tyre registration has been introduced into the US Senate. This bill, the Tire Efficiency, Safety and Registration Act S.1741, is described by supporters as legislation that would improve consumer safety and vehicle fuel economy, however some sections of the tyre industry have vowed to see the bill defeated.
The average difference in fuel consumption gained by fitting tyres with a ‘B’ EU tyre label fuel efficiency rating instead of ‘F’ rated tyres is around 4.1 per cent, suggests a test carried out in Germany. The six-vehicle test was jointly conducted by Chemical manufacturer Lanxess and energy provider RheinEnergie as part of a project run together by RheinEnergy and the City of Cologne over the last few years.
Sumitomo’s “fossil fuel-free” tyre was one of the products on display at European brand, Falken Tyre’s Reifen 2014 stand, and while the tyre is still in development for the European market (as opposed to the Dunlop-branded version on sale in Japan), Falken has embraced a commitment to greener tyres similar to that of some higher-priced premium brands. The manufacturer’s Ecorun range, with patterns such as the Ziex ZE914 and Sincera SN832, distinguish its more environmentally-friendly products, with notably large improvements in their performance achieved in the last few years.
The latest AA passenger car tyre has arrived, with eight sizes of Goodyear’s EfficientGrip Performance meeting the wet grip and rolling resistance criteria. The brand is now providing one of the largest number of tyre sizes sporting AA EU tyre label grades on the market. The new sizes complement an already extensive BA rated offering from Goodyear on the market today, with 53 EfficientGrip Performance sizes rated BA.
Nokian Tyres is claiming an industry first with the release of a Nokian Hakkapeliitta R2 fitment designed for the electric BMW i3. The Finnish manufacturer says the winter tyre has achieved an ‘A’ European tyre label rating for rolling resistance – a boast that not even the most optimistic tyre maker has voiced since the label’s introduction in late 2012. But given Nokian’s impeccable credentials as a winter tyre specialist, we can be confident that this particular Hakkapeliitta R2 does exactly what it says on the tin. To quote the manufacturer, the tyre “allows for safe, economical, and high-performance driving on snow and ice in demanding Nordic winter weather.”
RH Claydon’s John Parker gave his first Tyre Wholesalers Group speech as chairman at the group’s annual lunch in November. Parker covered the current state of the market, before summing up current views on part worn tyres and tyre labelling, the latter of which he labelled a “debacle”. Attending the event, Tyres & Accessories reports the contents of Parker’s speech below. Parker contextualised what he had to say with current UK market figures. Saying that the consumer tyre replacement market has “stabilised at about 34m units give or take”, he reserved judgement on whether this represented a corner starting to be turned, while noting that this did not take into account part worn sales.
As the first brand to achieve passenger car tyre double-A grading on both the European and the Japanese tyre labels with the EP001S, Bridgestone’s Ecopia product range must be considered one of the leading eco tyre ranges in the current, post-labelling era. More noticeably, in terms of the shape of the product at least, Bridgestone’s EP500 “ologic” large and narrow tyre is a signifier that more radical product design decisions are making it to production. While the terminology for tyres designed to be eco-friendly is not exactly fixed, with definitions subject to subtle variations depending on the manufacturer, the presence of a rolling resistance A or B-grade on both major tyre labels to use this measurement seems a fair way to define an eco tyre. Yet for premium brands, the label grades can only be one part of the picture, as the end user is likely to be more discerning about their product choice, having paid generally a higher price for the product.
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