Hankook, Goodyear and Yokohama Become Winner of Tire Technology International Awards Ceremony
This year the Tire Technology International Awards ceremony took place in Koln (Germany). The main award was given to Hankook company who became Tire Manufacturer of the Year. Goodyear was the first in Tire Technology of the Year while Yokohama won the first prize for being Ecological Achievement of the Year.
Jury members were extremely impressed by the development of Hankook company over the latest twelve months, which would likely make it the fifth world’s largest tire manufacturer in a couple of years.
Jin-Wook Choi, the executive manager and the head of European Hankook department said that they are very glad to get such an award for it means the recognition of their philosophy of standing growth. He added that the previous year was a great success for the company, which became thanks to the hard work of their employees.
The second and the third prizes in this category were given to Apollo and Bridgestone companies.
Goodyear was awarded thanks to its high-performance UltraGrip Ice+ frictional winter tire highly praised by the jury. It was called an impressive tire designed to manage the most problematic roads in the world, the ice-covered roads of Scandinavia. Marс Junio, the general director of Goodyear Innovative center in Luxemburg – it is where the tire was worked out – said that they are proud of their tire’s performance and are glad to be the best among winter tire manufacturers.
Speaking about Yokohama company, jury members stressed that the company’s numerous ecological projects weren’t unnoticed while the most impressive one was the one dealing with bio diversity preservation. In the frames of that project Yokohama carried out a profound research on how its activities affect the environment and tried to reduce negative influence on it caused by the use of natural rubber and mineral resources.
Japanese Create Nano Rubber
Japanese scientists have recently created a new type of carbon-based rubber that ensures extremely cold temperatures. The new high-quality rubber can be used in different spheres of human life like footwear, automotive and tire-making industries and so on. It is peculiar by its unique features previously unseen with other materials, says Ming Xu, a scientist from the National Institute of Progressive Industrial Science.
The new rubber includes carbonic nano tubes in its structure and belongs to viscoelastic materials. It can be pressed, twisted, rolled, stretched or bent; still it always retains its initial shape. It performs just the same way as other traditional materials in usual temperature conditions. But if you freeze the latter or overheat them – which was actually done by the Japanese during the research – they would respectively break up or melt.
Don’t be afraid of it with the new nano rubber – it resists really extreme working environment. It is still usable at a temperature of 1000 degrees Centigrade above zero, the temperature when aluminum melts and steel becomes softer. The same is true for very cold temperatures. Such wide range of temperatures means that it can be used not only on automotive plants but is even suitable for making spaceships.
If included into the structure of cloth it would eliminate the necessity of ironing as clothes would be always as if ironed a minute ago. All you have to do is to straight your dress or shirt and cloth fibers in it would take their original shape.
At last, the new rubber is electro conductive thanks to nano tubes in it. If placed on shock absorbers it can accumulate electricity created during rides on irregular road surfaces.
How Much Does the Country of Production Affect Tire Quality?
Do the tires coming under one and the same trade mark but made in different countries really differ? The question is a frequently asked one nowadays for many tire manufacturers have their plants in different corners of the world to cope with the amounts of production.
The world-known tire companies assure their customers that their products are completely the same in term of quality regardless of the country they were “made in.” They maintain that technologies and materials used on different plants do not differ much except for some components that don’t affect the quality of the end product and local resources that are not sensible to import, such as air and water.
Still, it’s worth mentioning that there’re no two identical products and in any case they would differ. But at the same time there exists such a notion as a tolerable limit that is +/- one per cent for summer tires, for instance. The data is true for the majority of tire producers, so taking into account possible deviations in both directions, it can be said that two tires that differ no more than by two per cent can be called identical.
However, people are prone to confide in one country’s products rather than to another one’s. Choosing between the tires from France and China they are more likely to buy a French tire set rather than a Chinese one. There was a research conducted by the experts from an automotive paper who did comparison tests of Goodyear Excellence tires made in France and in China.
The tires underwent a series of quality and performance tests. There were some deviations in tire weight and rubber stiffness, which makes us assume that some constructive differences do really exist. At the same time, there were almost no differences in terms of performance. There were some nuances concerning course-keeping ability, smooth running and noise level, but they are so insignificant that excellently suit the norm of 2 per cent.
So, as the research has proven, everything in hidden in our psychology and concerns only stereotypes and prejudices towards the state of technology development in this or that country. As a rule, if we don’t look at a “Made in..” mark, we don’t feel the products’ inferiority or superiority.
The History Of Goodyear Company
The history of the Goodyear company started in 1898 when Frank Seiberling decided to name his newly-founded company after Charles Goodyear, great inventor of rubber compounds. The full name of the company – Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Frank Seiberling purchased his first plant for the money borrowed from his stepbrother. A former plant on the production of cardboard on the bank of the Cuyahoga River in eastern Acron, Ohio became the first enterprise of the company. Rubber and cotton were to be transferred from the other part of the world in a small town with restricted railway network. The staff of the company included only thirteen workers who were producing tires for bicycles and carts. The company also produced fire hoses and even rubber poker chips.
Seiberling also invented a trade mark – a sandal with wings that appeared in the newspaper commercials already in 1901. It was also the year when Seiberling offered his tires to a young car producer Henry Ford for his first racing car. It was the first time when Goodyear tires participated in motor races.
In 1903 the first tubeless tire was patented, in 1908 – the first all-weather tire. In 1909 Goodyear opened “aerospace” page – the company presented special tires for planes. Before this skis or bicycle tires were used for landing. In 1910 the company opened a plant in Canada and entered international markets. In a year Goodyear tires “flew” over the whole continent – from Long Beach in New York to Long Beach in California. Of course the flight wasn’t non-stop and took 84 days. In 1912 the first airship of the company appeared. In the same year Goodyear started its activity in Europe – London representative office was opened.
The Goodyear company passed a way from the first bicycle tire to the largest tire manufacturing company. This honorable title was given to the company already in 1916. It was the time when the slogan “Goodyear tires are used wider than any others” appeared. In 1926 Goodyear became the biggest tire company. These first legendary years predetermined its working pace that can be felt even today. At the moment the company produces tires for almost all kinds of transport – from motorcycles to buses.
Today the Goodyear company is the largest tire producer in the world, it works on six continents and its sales volume amounts to more than 15 billion dollars a year. Besides tires under Goodyear trade mark the company also manufactures tires of other world-renowned brands: Dunlop, Kelly, Fulda, Lee, Sava and Debica. The company also produces rubber technical goods and polymers for automobile and industrial markets.
Innovations – uninterrupted stream of new ideas, materials and technologies – has always constituted the basis of the company’s activity. In 1943 Goodyear founded the first research laboratory that later got thousands of patents. Many of the Goodyear specialists’ inventions were applied not only in tire and automobile industry but also for the production of artificial heart and joints, glues, artificial lawns for sport grounds, food packing, etc.
Today the Goodyear research center employs scientists and engineers from all over the world who contribute to the state-of-the-art scientific field engaged in the production of rubbers and polymers.
