Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019 - 53

interview

has been changing over many years,
largely driven by OE customers. Ten years
ago, the Golf had a basic wheel size of
13", today it's 17". So OEs are driving that
size mix. But there's still a big difference
between what we sell for OE and replacement, as there is a huge number of vehicles beyond the average age of eight or
nine years.
Competition is fierce in this segment,
everyone wants to sell 18" tyres, such is
the law of supply and demand. This creates significant price pressure. We think
there's other areas of the market based
on performance differentiation beyond
size - such as vans. A decade ago that was
a commodity segment, but now they're
high load, high speed products. It's a
commercial benefit to fleets, having good
tyres, so they're willing to pay for something a little better.
Can you say what direction
Continental is going in terms of new
product development?
We're getting more specialised. When I
was working in the R&D division, the volume products were satisfying the majority
of market needs. Now, we have to have
products for alternative applications.
The Eco 6, for example, the name
gives away the application, it's designed
to reduce rolling resistance, increase fuel

economy. For stopping distance, you have
the Premium Contact. High performance
is served by the Sport Contact 6.
But I tend to say that now it's less tyre
innovation and more technology innovation. That comes from material and production processes. To be honest, [tread]
pattern designs are similar. There's a perfect solution and everyone will find that
eventually. So the secret is in the material
recipe, manufacturing.
What do you think of airless tyres, is
there a future for those technologies?
We're continuously looking at the market,
what's presented. This is not a new phenomenon, but if you look back over the
past 50 years, none of those concepts
succeeded.
I always compare the pneumatic tyre
with windscreen wipers. They are ideally
suited to the intended purpose. There's
different solutions, but they just achieve
the same goal for a significantly higher
cost. A pneumatic tyre is a pretty smart
solution.
The flip side is the risk of having a puncture, which makes an airless tyre look appealing. But they can have broken spokes,
other issues. From my point of view, I can
see technologies like this being used in
very specific applications. Are they the future of tyres? I have my doubts.

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Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019

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