Corporate News

ENASAVE ES801, non-petroleum tire to sell in after-market

2005.10.20

Dunlop Falken Tyres Ltd., Sumitomo Rubber's subsidiary will start selling the ENASAVE ES801 tires beginning March 1, 2006. The epoch-making, breakthrough tire is made 70% of non-petroleum materials. It helps us to utilize limited petroleum and reduce CO2 to warm the globe. It is the tire of future to realize both a happy car life and conservation of natural resources.
The tire will come in three sizes and sold at open price in Japanese replacement market.

  1. Characteristics of ENASAVE ES801
    • 70% of the materials used for the tire is non-petroleum.
      We have succeeded to decrease the use of synthetic rubber which is a petro-related material and increase the use of natural rubber, which helps lower tire's rolling resistance. We also adopted other non-petroleum materials for filler, oil and casing. In this way, we have raised the percentage of non-petroleum materials from 44% for conventional tires to 70% for ENASAVE ES801.

      Polymersynthetic rubber epoxidized natural rubber
      Fillercarbon black silica
      Oilpetroleum oil vegetable oil
      Casingsynthetic fiber vegetable fiber
    • By 30%, the rolling resistance of the tire is improved.
      The increased use of natural rubber has lowered rolling resistance by 30%, compared with our own conventional tires. This means lots of improvement in fuel consumption.
  2. Technologies Employed
    • New material: epoxidized natural rubber
      The natural rubber loses its gripping power for braking and cornering when it is used much as it is. In order to overcome this problem, we developed epoxidized natural rubber and succeeded in decreasing the amount of use of petro-originated synthetic rubber, which used to take an important role in increasing the grip of the tire.
    • New development: aerodynamic technology
      In order to reduce air resistance against tires in motion, we have adopted "Aerodynamic Design," an original design to eliminate letterings that usually appear in the area between tread shoulder and sidewall. With this new development, we have succeeded in reducing air resistance by degree equivalent to taking one side view mirror off and lowering tire's rolling resistance further.
    • New tread pattern: optimum lateral groove angle, etc.
      We developed special tread pattern for the tire as follows.
      1. Optimum lateral grooves angle lowers rolling resistance.
      2. Aerodynamic shoulder design lowers rolling resistance.
      3. Asymmetric lib shift reduces noise.
      4. Straight grooves improve wet performance.
      5. Optimum block stiffness distribution improves dry performance.
  3. Tire sizes
    185/65R15 88H
    195/65R15 91H
    195/55R16 86V