Continental has produced a small batch of its ContiWinterContact TS 850 P tyres with treads made exclusively of rubber from the dandelion root, for testing. In drives at test sites in Arividsjaur (Swedish Lapland) and at the Contidrom (Lower Saxony), the tyres made of ‘Taraxagum’ demonstrated properties expected by developers.
“After several years of intensive development work together with the Fraunhofer Institute, we are excited to be taking the first dandelion tyres onto the road. To get the most meaningful test results from the crop yield produced by our research project to date, we decided to build passenger car winter tyres, as they contain a particularly high proportion of natural rubber. We are continuing to pursue the goal of developing tyres based on dandelion rubber to readiness for series production within the next five to 10 years,” said tyre division chief Nikolai Setzer.
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The supplier said development of tyres with rubber made from the dandelion root had “been very promising”. The company is now working with development partners on the further industrialisation of the rubber. As a result of extensive research conducted together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME), the Julius Kühn Institute, and the plant breeding company Aeskulap, in the past few years good progress toward cultivating a very high-yield and robust kind of Russian dandelion has already been made.
The long-term goal of the research project is to find an ecologically, economically, and socially viable solution to the increasing demand for natural rubber, which would ease the pressure on traditional rubber tree plantations in the tropics. The project also aims to reduce dependency on the sometimes severe price fluctuations of natural rubber on the commodities exchanges. In addition, cultivating dandelions on previously unused land in temperate regions of Europe, closer to Continental’s European tyre plants, would sustainably reduce logistics costs and the transport-related impact on the environment.
