Geeking out on tire tech from Michelin

MANILA, Philippines - Did you know that when you purchase a pair of new tires, you should install them in the rear to improve vehicle stability, particularly on wet roads? And did you know that, depending on their rolling resistance, tires can account for one full tank of gas out of every five?

It would be safe to say that our ride’s rubbers are rarely on our minds except when they fail or get a flat. Damien Hallez of tire giant Michelin insists that your car’s Michelin shoes are, in fact, more high-tech than an Apple iPad, and reveals that both firms rank among the top 100 most innovative organizations in the world.

You’ll get no argument that companies with the best products also make a committed, significant investment in research and development. Since its founding in 1889, Clermont-Ferrand, France-based Michelin has grown in girth exponentially—establishing 69 production sites in 18 countries, along with a complement of some 115,000 employees. The company has produced a total of 176 million tires, plus over 10 million of its maps and guides. Michelin’s annual spend on R&D is a staggering €592 million (more than P36 billion).

As far as Michelin is concerned, this is money well spent. The modern tire is, indeed, a technological marvel that doesn’t just provide padding between your car and the road. It is continuously evolving product that delivers ever-increasing performance. Michelin produced a clever infomercial that gives us insight to the kind of everyday punishment tires have to endure. The numbers bear it out: 80 degrees Centigrade temperature, a traction load of 750kgs per tire, water evacuation capacity of 30 liters per second, up to 150 percent deformation, impact of 300 kgs per sq.cm.—while able to grip the road after less than a millisecond during emergency braking.

Hallez declares with a smile: “I don’t want to be reincarnated as a tire.”

No matter how you, well, spin it, the automobile tire is clearly an impressive piece of engineering. Chemists, tribologists (experts in friction), and other specialists and scientists are constantly testing, analyzing, and experimenting in a quest to deliver performance and safety—serving up previously dichotomous characteristics such as dry versus wet grip, and low rolling resistance (fuel savings) versus longevity into a single product. Michelin’s bright minds discovered that adding silica to the rubber compound helps realize this breadth of characteristics.

Meanwhile, Thailand-based Tony Menard, the marketing director of passenger car and light truck for Southeast Asia and Oceania, explains Michelin’s enduring involvement in the realm of motorsports.

“Michelin races for the technological challenges,” he says. As competitive racing over a variety of conditions presents challenges of speed, angles, surfaces. “It brings together all performances,” Menard continues. Michelin, he maintains, particularly likes to join endurance races, instead of one when you can stop as many times as you want.

“You don’t make pit stops when it rains,” he declares.

It’s welcome good news that the learning and technology that emanates from demands of racing cascades or trickles down to marketplace products that everyday consumers purchase and use.

Also, while trying to expand the performance spectrum of its tires, Michelin says it deploys particular products that are suited to the general conditions of the country they will render service in. Southeast Asian territories, for instance, share qualities of high temperature, climate, holes, and roadwork.

So, yes, those French-bred rubbers are designed to handle the jungle that is EDSA.