Goodyear is at the forefront of innovation with our award-winning use of soybean oil in tires. Use of renewable resources like soybean oil helps to create a more sustainable tire, all while enhancing traction in rain and snow with improved tire flexibility in low temperatures.
The use of soybean oil provides the driver increased performance from their tires by improving the flexibility of the tire in lower temperatures as well as enhancing traction in both rain and snow.
Further, consumers aren’t the only ones benefiting from this technology. Using soybean oil in the production of Goodyear tires supports farmers and ultimately, our environment. Goodyear scientists and engineers work intentionally to formulate new polymer and compound technologies that are partially derived from natural, sustainable materials. Soybean oil is a renewable resource, and this new industrial use opens yet an additional market for the increasingly versatile soybean.
In our quest to discover the best technological advancements that can lead us to produce great tires, we announced a first for our industry, Goodyear's successful application of soybean oil and commercially available tires. Over the past few years Goodyear has worked closely with the United Soybean Board to develop soy-based technology that would add performance to tires. Following extensive experiments, lab testing, road testing, and more, we harnessed this new technology to begin using it in the new Assurance WeatherReady tire, a broadline tire that covers 77% of cars, SUVs, crossovers, pickups, and minivans. We discovered that soybean oil can improve the pliability of a tire at low temperatures, which improves the wet and winter traction. We also found that soybean oil mixes more easily with the rubber compounds, leading to reduced energy consumption, and therefore improving manufacturing efficiency. Our partnership with the United Soybean Board was vital to the success of this project.
Soybean oil substitutes for petroleum-based oils in our rubber compounds as it is a triglyceride with unique properties compared to petroleum-based oils.
The usage of soybean oil allows the Goodyear tires utilizing it to break some of the traditional boundaries of performance of petroleum-based oils, enhancing product performance for the consumer.
Note: For illustrative purposes only. Does not represent actual scale of potential performance gains from use of soybean oil in tires.
Four of Goodyear’s bestselling premium tires are manufactured with soybean oil:
Every tire on the road uses some proportion of oil in the tread rubber compound formulation. Goodyear Chief Engineer of Polymer Science and Technology, Robert A. Woloszynek notes that ‘in a typical tire, the amount of petroleum oil is around 8 percent by weight. In the Assurance WeatherReady, we were able to replace about 60 percent of that oil with soybean oil.”
In 2018, Goodyear won the “Environmental Achievement of the Year Tire Technology International Award for Innovation” and Excellence at the Tire Technology International Expo for our patented soybean oil polymer. The first product containing this technology, the Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady, was launched in 2017.
Goodyear is continually developing new products and leveraging our soybean oil technology is an ongoing focus. We set a goal of fully eliminating our use of petroleum-based oils by 2040 and replacing it with soybean oil technology is one great way for us to help meet our target.
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