We spent some quality time in the Michelin tire tent at the Long Beach round of the Formula E Championship learning about tires and, more specifically, the unique rubber that makes this electric series go round.
Michelin will start pushing harder on its various budget tire lines in a bid to combat the amount of cheap rubber coming out of China, changing up its product mix so that more affordable offerings count for between 25 and 30 percent instead of the current 15-to-20-percent mix.
There were any number of things said at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum last week that could easily be taken as platitudes. In the opening address by the CEO of the Michelin Group, Jean-Dominique Senard, for example, we have this: the Challenge has "the goal of imagining and creating the mobility of the future." Does that even have a meaning?
Michelin has been showing off its idea of combining the wheel and tire into a single component as far back as 2005. Dubbed the Tweel, the novel design replaced standard pneumatic tires and metal wheels with deforming spokes around a hub. While uses of the Tweel are still limited, the tech is about to get a big upgrade in production with Michelin opening a dedicated factory to
Michelin is globally known for two things – tires and food. Yeah, we know, those two are pretty far removed from each other, but the company's history in the former is very nearly as long and storied as its work in the latter.
We don't often cover tires, but a new model from Michelin, Premier A/S with EverGrip, has us at least a little curious. That's because the French tiremaker claims they're not just new tires, but offer "truly revolutionary advancements in tire technology" that are "...able to break the traditional paradigm."
Michelin North America has issued a recall of 1.3 million of its LTX M/S tire, produced from January 2010 to June 2012 at its Nova Scotia plant, size LT225/75R16 115/112R LRE. A "tread/belt endurance" issue lead could to tread separation, tread loss or rapid air loss. Despite the massive number of tires recalled, the number of reported incidents appears to be small, with fewer than 200 US customers reported to have returned tires due to the issue, and Michelin says it has received 20 property da
As Nissan neared completion of its ZEOD RC electric racer, the automaker approached Michelin with a challenge: make us some racing tires with low rolling resistance that also have a high level of grip.
Yellowstone National Park's most famous attraction is called "Old Faithful." Now, Michelin says its tires make their own claim to dependability inside the oldest national park in the US. Indeed, the tiremaker has donated more than 1,400 tires to the National Park Service since 2008, enough so that the NPS has saved around $300,000 in annual expenses for its 800-vehicle fleet.
Let's face it: finding new tires for older cars can be challenging if tire manufacturers have stopped carrying the right sizes (this writer went through Hell to find a set of 205/60-13s). But what about tires for low-volume supercars, which use sizes that often won't fit on high-volume production vehicles? The Porsche Carrera GT isn't that old and tires are still available in the correct sizes, but the German automaker has shown its
A 39-year-old FIA World Electric Land Speed Record has fallen to a sleek, green electric machine called the Lola. Officially the Drayson B12 69/EV electric Le Mans Prototype, the 1000-kilogram (2,204-pound) race car hit a top speed of 204.185 miles per hour yesterday at RAF Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire, England. That's over 29 mph faster than the previous record of 175 mph that was set in 1974 by Battery Box General Electric.
Tires get overlooked in the headlines about fuel economy and CAFE standards, which is a little odd. After all, a car's tires are the only contact it has with the road, so more efficient rubber means more efficient use of fuel, and even tiny gains spread over the huge number of road-going vehicles can translate into remarkable overall gains.
During an event in Park City, Utah today, Hyundai Motor America President and CEO John Krafcik confirmed to Autoblog that the funky Veloster hatchback will be getting a new summer tire option. "We could do better in terms of tires [and] we had always planned to have a summer option," Krafcik told us.
Combine rising raw materials costs, reduced production capacity and manufacturing bottlenecks, and the result for the world of tires is this: not enough hoops to satisfy automaker demand. According to Automotive News, even before The Great Recession hit, a Bridgestone tire executive said that plant closures alone killed 71 million units of capacity in the U.S. New factories and factory expansion
Trying to understand the scope of the 2011 Challenge Bibendum – Michelin's multi-day, mindblowingly comprehensive sustainability mobility event held this year in Berlin, Germany – is not easy. There are 280 vehicles on display or as part of the ride and drive. There are dozens of closed and open sessions discussing pretty much every aspect of moving people and things around the world more efficiently. The vehicles on dis
Michelin uses puppets to explain tire pressure – Click above to watch the video after the jump
You can't win 'em all, but you can win some. So while Pirelli may have beaten Michelin to the punch for the F1 tire supply contract, hesitation to find itself spread too thin led to its subsequently dropping out of the World Rally Championship. Well it looks like Pirelli's gain and
The oldest and fiercest tire war is not the one waged for any motorsport victory, but the one that is still trying to win your hearts and wallets. In fact, the latter begets the former. And in a new and changing – and supposedly more caring – world, tire makers are turning to increasingly novel ways to make their tires better and get your attention. Michelin is the latest to catch our eyes with its Primacy MXM4 rubber that uses sunflower oil to help "the tire to maintain its edge in
As the hosts of the Challenge Bibendum, Michelin took a bit of time in Rio de Janiero to allow the company's three managing partners (the company's leaders, as it does not have a CEO) to talk about why the 10th running of the eco-event was important and took questions from the assembled journalists and attendees. A lot of the talk centered around the company's efforts to expand sales in developing countries and safety issues, but on
