World's largest tyre maker announces major change for electric car owners
While manufacturers claim many vehicles are zero-emission, tyres are still large polluters. However, a recent trip to Bridgestone showed how that may change.
Across the world, companies and motorists alike are being put under pressure to make the switch from a petrol or diesel car to a fully electric alternative.
However, whilst many car brands manufacture these models as having 'zero emissions', since they do not have an engine that can produce carbon dioxide, tyres can still be a heavy polluter.
With tyres producing around 6.1 million tonnes of pollution each year, manufacturers such as Bridgestone are making the development of cleaner alternatives.
Speaking at a Europe-wide press event at the company's Technical Centre near Rome, Italy, Bridgestone's Chief Technology Officer Emilio Tiberio voiced plans to have a range of 100 percent sustainable tyres on the market by 2050.
He explained: "This is a job where you don't get bored at all. The beauty of Bridgestone as a company is we always have a long-term solution, not just our next step but what we'll be doing in 2050."
Currently, Bridgestone tyres are typically made with around 40 percent sustainable materials. Whilst this is a vast improvement on just a few years ago, the company is still undergoing significant research in removing silica, a substance which can improve the durability and running costs of tyres, but is harmful to extract and process.
In a bid to remove silica without sacrificing its benefits, Bridgestone has installed six automated testing machines which run around the clock, checking the properties of up to 40,000 types of rubber each year.
Using a mix of new and recycled compounds, the machines make sure that the materials are capable of staying intact when exposed to temperatures from -100 to 100 degrees celcius.
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However, with plans to become a carbon neutral company in the next 25 years, Bridgestone has also pledged to reduce amount of real world prototyping and durability testing by up to 80 percent through use of Virtual Tyre Development (VTD).
The company claims that artificial intelligence is able to quickly generate suitable tyre designs by implementing the best aspects of previous tyres, and can be tested using a modified driving simulator.
Taking to the wheel on what felt like a very realistic arcade game, I found that the simulator can give an incredibly realistic depiction of using the tyres on a number of road surfaces and weather conditions, even including how particular sets of tyres can cause the vehicle to vibrate and sound, another growing concern for motorists and authorities alike.
It is easy for motorists to think about tyres as an inconvenience, costing them hundreds of pounds every few years when they wear out or get a puncture.
However, the real inconvenience is the damage they cause to the environment, being the second-largest source of microplastics in the ocean.
Whilst there is evidently still plenty of work to achieve, making components such as tyres more sustainable to manufacture and use is the only way that road-going vehicles can be truly zero-emission.