How to make an EV tire that doesn’t pollute the environment

Congratulations, world. We did it. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s, we have drastically reduced emissions of carcinogenic particles from our automobiles and other sources, a change that years added to our lives.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that we can now spend more time focusing on the remaining sources, including some unexpected ones. In the age of electric vehicles, tires are becoming the biggest particle emitters, and as we’ve seen, whether it’s the microplastics in our shrimp or the preservatives in our salmon, they’re having a disruptive impact on our environment.

Gunnlaugur Erlendsson wants to do something about it. The affable Icelander founded Enso to address what he saw as a growing need for better EV tires. The UK-based company’s next big step is hitting close to home: a $500 million US tire plant specifically for building environmentally friendly tires for electric vehicles.

Well, more environmentally friendly, anyway.

The founding of Enso in 2016 was “a little bit ahead of the curve” when it comes to EV adoption, according to Erlendsson. “There were only a few research reports on tire pollution, and almost none of them actually dealt with microplastics or air pollution,” he said.

But the writing was on the road. The industry’s first engines, like the Tesla Model S, offered far more power than the internal combustion cars they competed against, but they also carried huge weight penalties. A Model S Plaid, for example, is about the same size as a Lexus ES, but weighs about 1,000 pounds and has more than three times the power. More weight and more power means more tire wear, leading to expensive and frequent trips to the store to buy new rubber.

While EV-specific tires are increasingly common, Erlendsson says most tire manufacturers are too focused on partnering with automakers, shipping new tires with new cars. “So even though there is technology today to make tires much better, it is not reaching 90% of the tire industry, which is the aftermarket,” he said.

While Erlendsson said Enso is working to develop partnerships with those same vehicle manufacturers, the company’s U.S. business model will focus on the 90 percent, creating tires with the correct accessories for popular EVs, regardless of brand, and then selling them directly to customers.

What makes Enso tires different? Erlendsson was light on technical details, but promised 10% lower rolling resistance than normal tires, which equates to a proportional increase in range. This will make your EV cheaper to run, while a 35% increase in tire life means less wear, fewer particles in the air, and fewer old tires sent to the incinerator, where half of all American tires go to die.

The new Enso factory will also handle recycling. It will be truly carbon neutral, will not rely on carbon offsets and will make tires from recycled carbon black and tire silica made from rice husks.

But what about 6PPD, the worrisome tire preservative that appears in our fish and even our bodies? Enso still uses it, but its days are numbered.

“Every tire company in the world is using 6PPD in their current production tires,” said Erlendsson. “The technology to remove 6PPD exists,” he added, but declined to discuss the matter further, citing restrictions due to signed NDAs. Research bodies in both California It is Washington State have provided initial assessments of alternatives, but none appear to be a silver bullet that will save our tires without destroying the environment.

The use of 6PPD is still permitted, but the EPA recently issued new guidelines for monitoring their presence, and earlier this year, Washington state approved a bill regulating its use. More restrictions are coming, which Enso says it welcomes.

Enso aims to produce 5 million tires at the new plant by 2027. Its location is still being finalized, but Enso cites Colorado, Nevada, Texas or Georgia as likely locations. With the southeastern US becoming a hotbed for electric vehicle production and the so-called “Battery Belt” receiving huge investments from startups like Redwood Materials, the latter option may be the safest bet.

A factory of this size will be a major step forward for Enso, which currently supplies tires exclusively for use by fleets in the UK, including Royal Mail. Per The Guardiana study by Transport for London, which regulates public transport in the city, shows that Enso’s tires live up to Erlendsson’s claims of greater efficiency, reduced wear and tear and reduced costs.

If Enso can offer this on a larger scale to American drivers, it will run counter to typical corporate goals of selling more stuff to more people. Erlendsson sees this as a way to redefine the current tire economy.

“A proposal to sell fewer tires is simply not palatable for the majority of companies listed in this sector,” he said. “It’s difficult for someone with a legacy manufacturing and legacy supply chains and distribution model to suddenly say, ‘I’m going to make fewer tires and I’m going to spend more to make them,’ without lowering their stock price. at the same time.”

Of course, bringing down an industry over 150 years old is no small feat either.