Quality

Goodyear is positioned for success through its commitments to advanced energy efficiency, safety, tire longevity, comfort and convenience.

Commitment

Why it matters

Company customers - OEMs, airlines, fleets and others - continue to face significant pressure to further reduce vehicle emissions and energy use and increase safety. This is critical to their stakeholders, their competitive position and reaching their corporate responsibility goals. Goodyear have and continue to advance technologies to help their customers reach their emissions reduction and safety goals and to be part of the solution to these global challenges.

Quality Governance

Goodyear’s two Innovation Centers in Akron, Ohio and Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg; three development centers in Hanau, Germany; Pulandian, China; and Hebron, Ohio; and four regional innovation labs, help us to develop and test state-of-the-art products and services. Goodyear key business leaders hold annual Product and Innovation Leadership reviews to discuss regional product needs, developing technologies, regulatory changes, customer input, benchmarking, new product roadmaps and upcoming product launches. Goodyear’s Technology and Materials teams create roadmaps for potential products, following a technology creation process (TCP) and product creation process (PCP) that include technology or product development, prototype testing, manufacturing scale and ultimately product launches. Quarterly meetings discuss progress on TCPs and PCPs, and emerging market trends, and to ensure that their processes and products provide optimized tire performance and meet tire labeling and regulatory requirements.

When Goodyear test their products and take into account regulatory requirements for all countries and regions where they operate, as well as additional testing to meet Goodyear’s stringent standards for performance and handling. For example, tire labeling regulations in Europe require three metrics - fuel efficiency, wet grip and external road noise. Goodyear also test their tires across more than 50 safety and performance metrics before they enter the market.

Focus

Improving fuel efficiency

Goodyear’s Life Cycle Assessment results point to the product-use phase as greatest opportunity to reduce GHG emissions. Goodyear has the ability to help influence fuel efficiency through their tires’ rolling resistance and weight. A tire with low rolling resistance and a vehicle with less weight consume less fuel and emit fewer greenhouse gases. To help reduce rolling resistance, tire construction must reduce unnecessary weight and minimize the energy losses in the tire, while maintaining sufficient traction. Therefore, Goodyear always test their rolling resistance and weight reduction advancements in tandem with wet grip to ensure top performance in both categories.

Goodyear developed state-of-the-art technology in rubber compounding, tire construction and manufacturing to meet the increasing demand for lighter tires with low rolling resistance. Rubber compounding efforts include testing different methods to mix and cure the compound, as well as alternative materials and fillers that could enhance fuel efficiency.

Based on internal testing, Goodyear’s line of Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max tires feature their lowest rolling resistance and can save up to 2,600 mi/4,000 km worth of gas over the life of a set of four tires. For the past decade, Goodyear has applied lightweight technology to many of its tires.

Safety

Safety is a top priority for Goodyear, OEM customers and consumers. Enhanced tire safety comes from wet grip - the braking behavior of tires on a wet road - and added traction for winter road conditions. Goodyear continuously innovate and test for potential performance improvements in wet, dry and winter conditions. One Goodyear innovation that enhances tire performance stems from a renewable, bio-based material: soybean oil. In 2012, Goodyear scientists and engineers - with the support from the United Soybean Board - able in changing temperatures, a key performance achievement to maintaining and enhancing vehicle grip on roadways. Goodyear commercialized this innovation in their Assurance WeatherReady™ consumer tire line in 2017. In 2018, Goodyear received the “Environmental Achievement of the Year” award for this tire line from Tire Technology International.

Given the innovation and performance excellence that Goodyear is able to provide their customers with this product, Goodyear is developing additional soybean-oil-based tire lines, and actively working toward goals to increase soy oil consumption by 25% by 2020 and fully replace petroleum-derived oils by 2040. Visit Sustainable Materials for more examples of Goodyear’s sustainable material use.

Tire Longevity

Tire longevity reduces the number of tires that reach their end of life in a given year. Tire longevity is especially important to Goodyear’s fleet customers, who save significant time and labor by replacing fewer tires, as well as electric vehicle customers, who benefit from longer-lasting tires to handle increased torque from electric engines.

In 2018, Goodyear launched the Assurance MaxLife consumer tire in the U.S., which features TredLife™ Technology, easy tread depth readings, and highest tread wear limited warranty for consumer tires.

Goodyear also offers commercial and off-highway retreading services to increase tire longevity. Goodyear is known by their commercial and off-highway fleet customers for efficient retread services, which enable them to get back on the road quickly and save money.

Comfort

Goodyear is working to reduce the road noise from tires through a combination of tread design and construction of the tire carcass. Because some vehicle constructions are more sensitive to tire noise produced by air vibration inside the tire cavity, Goodyear created Sound Comfort Technology to reduce tire air cavity resonance. The technology applies an open-cell polyurethane foam element to the inner surface of the tire that enables a vehicle interior noise reduction of up to 4dB. The foam is also light enough to avoid negative impacts on tire weight or rolling resistance.

Opportunities

Goodyear is putting more emphasis on the speed at which they bring innovations to market. These innovations will include mobility solutions focused on fuel efficiency, tread life and noise reduction, and their desire to source sustainable materials that deliver optimal performance.