Toyo develops 96.5% sustainable concept tire

Tokyo – Toyo Tire Corp. has developed a concept tire with 96.5% sustainable content, the group announced 9 Dec.

The tire features 61.5% renewable materials and 35% recycled content and improves sustainability by 6.5 percentage points compared to Toyo’s existing sustainable concept tire.

Renewable materials used in the tire include biomass-derived butadiene rubber, biomass-derived styrene-butadiene rubber, biomass-derived polyester fibre, rice husk ash silica, and plant-derived oil.

Recycled materials, meanwhile, include CO2-derived butadiene rubber, which was developed in collaboration with the University of Toyama (ERJ report), as well as recycled carbon black, recycled bead wire, and recycled steel cord.

The tire, according to Toyo, has “an extremely low rolling resistance coefficient, which contributes greatly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the tire's entire lifecycle.”

With an equivalent of AAA rating in rolling resistance under Japanese labelling system, the tire can also help improve the driving range of EVs.

Going forward, Toyo said it intended to work on the technological innovation and R&D with the aim of commercialising the technology in the production of existing tires.

“We have achieved recycling of materials that have been difficult to replace, such as sulphur and zinc oxide, which play an important role in tire performance and manufacturing processes,” said Toyo.

By adopting materials such as recycled sulphur and zinc oxide, the Japanese group said it “significantly increased” the proportion of sustainable materials used in each component of the concept tire.

Toyo has set itself a target of achieving a 40% sustainable material content in its tires rate by 2030 and 100% by 2050.