Headquartered in Gwangju, South Korea, Kumho Tire produces over 60 million tyres annually worldwide. Continuing just-auto’s series of interviews with tyre makers, Matthew Beecham spoke to Dirk Rockendorf, European Marketing Director of Kumho Tire to learn more about the run-flat tyre market, lightweighting and using football sponsorship to increase brand awareness in the European market.
What have been Kumho’s major achievements in Europe over the past 12 months?
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We have been working continuously on improving our products and this has recently been reflected in several good tyre test results. Our latest achievement was the “good” rating awarded by the renowned German ADAC organisation to our Ecowing ES01 KH27 in February this year. We have also enhanced our European organisation in order to meet the growing customer demand for support at a European level.
Can you tell us a little more about the Kumho brand and what it should mean to consumers?
Kumho is a brand which delivers best quality at a reasonable price. Kumho Tire offers tyres for passenger cars, SUVs, LCVs and heavy commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses. Headquartered in Korea, Kumho Tire operates 89 overseas sales corporations and 14 branches/offices, exporting more than 1.8 billion USD worth of products which are manufactured in eight domestic and overseas factories to about 180 countries. The company is continuously striving for ever higher levels of technological competence through its global network of R&D centres in China, North America, Germany and Gwangju, Korea which are all linked with its R&D headquarters at Yongin City, Seoul. Kumho Tire is currently taking a further leap in the global market through a wide range of marketing activities that will enhance awareness of the brand and also through the expansion of its sales networks.
Do you think that winter/summer tyre fitting should be standard across the EU?
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By GlobalDataWithin the European market we have different regions with different weather conditions. Thus it would be very difficult to standardise winter/summer tyre fitting across the EU. For example we have regions in Europe in which winter tyres are not required to be fitted for the whole year or indeed at all. As a result there would have to be a great many additional/exceptional regulations to handle all the different circumstances.
What are the challenges in designing tyres for electric vehicles?
Ensuring safety is fundamental to tyres. Even though reducing tyre weight is an important factor for EVs, there will be a limit to the premium which OEMs are willing to pay to achieve this as soon as safety factors are affected. In order to have the widest possible range with your EV, you need very light tyres with a low rolling resistance on the one hand, and on the other hand safety on wet roads for example must also be guaranteed. So finding a way of achieving a target which meets both safety and low weight criteria as well as optimised rolling resistance is the most challenging factor when designing special tyres for EVs.
Tyre lightweighting remains a priority …
Rising demand for electric cars will lead to a further increase in lightweight tyres. For example Kumho has already developed a special tyre for EVs, Wattrun VS31. With a weight reduction of 25% in comparison with existing standard products and with EU label grades of A/A, Wattrun VS31’s performance is optimised particularly for electric vehicles. It is a first step for us and we think that there is still potential to reduce weight further.
We’ve seen a number of tyre manufacturers create ties with football clubs. What’s your strategy in this sport in Europe?
We are currently active in football sponsorship in several European countries. For example in Germany we are supporting FC Schalke 04, Herta BSC Berlin and HSV. But we have also observed that almost every tyre manufacturer is now using marketing activity related to football or football sponsorship.Thus when developing our future marketing plans, we will be analysing how we can optimise and diversify our marketing activity in order to increase our brand awareness in the European market. For instance the Kumho brand has had a long association with motor sports. For 15 consecutive years Kumho has been the official tyre supplier to the Masters of F3. Also in the past Kumho has been active in the VLN in Germany, the international Auto GP Series and the Chinese CTCC Series, not to mention the 24 hours of Le Mans.
How do you see the further roll out of run-flat tyres amongst car segments in Europe?
With run-flat tyres, it is possible to avoid dangerous situations which can occur after a puncture. And there are some recent developments which will have a positive effect on the run-flat tyre market in Europe and we are expecting growing demand for such tyres in the future. For example, since 1 November 2014 every new car registered in the EU must be equipped with TPMS [tyre pressure monitoring system]. This means, since you need to have TPMS on your car for it to be equipped with run-flat tyres, there will be more possibilities to fit them. Also the fact that the latest run-flat tyres are lighter in weight will drive the growth in run-flat tyre demand still further. Thus while in the past there were only a few car models which could be fitted with run-flat tyres, you will have a greater variety of suitable cars in future.
