Original subtitles

[narrator] Join us on Tomorrow's World Today

as we journey through the worlds of inspiration,

creation, innovation and production

to find the ideas and technologies

that are shaping our future.

In this episode, we visit the world of production

to explore the technology and sustainability

behind tire manufacturing.

From Inventionland World Headquarters,

here's your host, George Davison.

This is a hoof buffer.

It's made from rubber

and it goes underneath a horseshoe

to help keep horses from slipping on the road.

You know, when they're wet or icy.

It was invented and patented back in the 1800s.

Now, you might be wondering what this device

has to do with Tomorrow's World.

Well, believe it or not,

it first came up for sale back in the 1800s

by a company that's still around today.

But instead of connecting the bottom of a horse's hoof to the road,

this company's inventing new ways to keep tires connected to the road.

I'm sending David on a mission

to explore how Continental has evolved

into one of the largest automotive technology suppliers in the world.

[Christian Koetz] The tire is one of the most safety-relevant products

on a vehicle, is it a car, is it a truck, is it whatever application.

It carries the load, it carries the forces.

If you don't have a reliable tire,

if you don't have a reliable product,

you make safety compromises.

Continental started as a rubber company

founded in 1871,

and then very, very soon after the foundation,

tires became part of our portfolio.

Actually, the first tire we produced

was the emerging of the bicycles.

And then very quickly after,

I think the first car hit the road in 1898

and we were one of the first manufacturers

of pneumatic tires for cars.

In those days, those tires were still, I think,

slick tires or treadless tires.

If you used your car today with a slick tire,

you know, grip is an issue.

So the total industry tried to figure out

some solutions for this challenge.

And actually in 1904, we were then the first company

coming out with treaded, or tires with a pattern.

I am personally very often asked, "What is the technology potential out of the tire?"

Because from an outside perspective,

if you're an end consumer

or not closely linked to the tire industry,

the tire, since 50-80 years more or less looks basically the same.

We believe individual mobility will continue to grow.

We have a very heterogeneous picture worldwide.

Then, on the technological side, new technical solutions,

new products, more services around the product,

so that the end consumer, the fleet owner,

whatever the customer is,

don't need to worry about our product, the tire, at all,

and not just buying the product and using it,

but we will take care for everything around the tire.

And I mean, there are not many companies out there

who have been for 150 years

independent and on their own.

We are very proud about that.

Contributed quite a lot to the development of mobility

over the 150 years, and we will continue to do so.

[David] I'm in Clinton, Mississippi,

at the new Conti Tire Truck plant.

This state-of-the-art Continental tire facility opened in 2019

and it's dedicated to truck tires.

Continental has come a long way

since it introduced its hoof buffers in 1871.

Since then,

they've also created solid tires for bicycles,

the patterned tread for automotive tires

and even detachable rims

which, if you've ever had to change a tire on the side of the road,

you definitely benefitted from that innovation.

Today, Continental has started using Russian dandelions

as an alternative source of raw material for the rubber tree,

which makes for some environmentally-friendly tire production.

I'm going to meet with Marco Rabe,

who's going to tell me all about the technology behind tires.

- Marco, I'm David. - David, nice to meet you.

So, I had no idea so much went into designing a tire.

I'd love it if you'd walk me through that.

Yeah, as you can see, we design tires

for all kinds of applications,

starting with bicycle tires, motorcycle tires,

off-road tires, racing tires, of course, truck tires.

It all starts virtually on a computer

as we simulate for every kind of condition

the tire will see out on the field.

[David] This looks like a segment of a tire to me,

is that what we have here?

Yes, this is actually a cross-section

of a truck tire.

And as you can see, it's not just rubber.

Of course, we have about 10

different rubber compounds in here,

but there's also a lot of steel.

Let's go out and see how we manufacture those.

Looking forward to it.

David, I'd like you to meet Ryal Siem, our plant manager.

Ryal, great to meet you.

Glad to meet you, David.

So, where are we?

We're in raw materials.

This is where rubber and chemicals are received

to produce tires.

Let's take a walk to the mixing department and I'll show you.

Great.

Okay, I'm no mathematician, but I'm assuming

this is the first stage of production.

What happens here?

[Ryal] This is mixing.

This is where rubber and chemicals are mixed

to produce tires.

Okay, I could be wrong, but I believe this is rubber.

[Ryal] This is finished rubber that we use

to make components up in extrusion. Take a look.

[David] Okay, Ryal. In my world,

this looks like an extruder,

but I don't think we're making pasta.

You're exactly right, we're in the extrusion area.

This is where we make many of the components that build a tire.

So, this is an example of our sidewall line.

All right, let's go up to the tire build area.

[David] Okay, this is looking way more technical

than anything I've seen so far.

[Ryal] You're exactly right.

This is one of the most sophisticated

pieces of machinery we have in the plant.

This is our tire building machine.

This is where all the components

such as the side wall, the inner liner,

the carcass and the beads all come together

to form a green tire.

So, David, here we have a green tire.

Why don't you take a feel of it

and you can see how soft the rubber still is?

Oh, that is soft. I don't think we're getting

many miles out of this tire.

No, not many miles out of this.

[Ryal] So, what happens now is

this tire is gonna go onto the conveyor,

and afterwards it's gonna go to curing.

Welcome to curing.

What I've caught on to? Curing equals hot.

[Ryal] That's because of the temperature

and the pressure required to cure a tire.

[David] So, what does that process look like?

[Ryal] Well, here in a moment,

the tire will go into the cavity.

Once it goes into the cavity, that's where it'll heat

and it'll cause the imprint for the tread

in for the side wall.

[David] And then after that?

After that, it stays in there

approximately 30 minutes to an hour.

And then it leaves here and it goes to final finish.

[David] Okay, I'm gonna go out on a limb here.

I think we have a finished tire.

You're exactly right.

This is final inspection.

Every tire goes through here

to ensure our quality that goes to our customers.

Let's take a walk over to the finished goods warehouse,

and we'll take a look at a lot of tires.

- You lead the way. - [Ryal] Let's go.

[Ryal] Welcome to our finished goods warehouse, David.

[David] So this is where all the tires come

before you ship them to your customers.

[Ryal] You're exactly right.

[Marco] But not before we test them.

So let's go to Uvalde, Texas, to see how we test our tires.

Excellent, let's go.

[engine roaring]

[tires screeching]

Welcome to Uvalde, David.

Our 5,000 acre facility in Texas.

We test tires all over the world

for all kinds of conditions.

Today, we're going to be looking at wet handling,

vertical traction and braking.

Do I get to ride or drive any of these vehicles?

Absolutely. Let's go.

Sweet.

David, this is our first test.

We're going to be testing these steer and drive tires

for a very important safety concept

called aquaplaning.

So, aquaplaning is when the road surface and the tires

do not contact due to water, correct?

Exactly, and we're going to see

how these trade patterns perform.

Ready to take a ride in a big truck?

[David] Yes, I am.

Chris, my life's in your hands, buddy.

- [Chris] All right, let's go. - [Marco] Ready, Chris?

[Chris] Yup.

[Marco] So, David, what did you think

of the aquaplaning test?

[David] I had a great time.

In fact, hitting that wet surface

at 50 miles an hour,

I didn't really experience any aquaplaning at all,

and in fact, the tires seemed

to dissipate the water beautifully.

It was a smooth ride.

So, that's exactly what the trade pattern

is designed for, to get rid of the water

out of the footprint.

So next we're going to be testing traction

on an off-road tire up a steep dirt hill.

Are you ready to take that truck up that hill?

- [David] I have to be. - [Marco] Go for it.

All right, Chris. You wanna walk me through this?

Yup. So, this one's not too bad.

Um, just be consistent with the throttle,

keep the steering wheel pointed straight

and let the truck and tires do all of the work.

- That's simple enough for me. - Yep.

- [David] Little gas. - [Chris] Yep.

[Chris] And just consistent.

[David] Consistent.

Marco, to say I've had a blast today

is a huge understatement.

And I've learned that the tire has a lot to do with

moving a vehicle forward.

I have a feeling the tire has a lot to do with

helping a vehicle stop as well.

Absolutely. When we talk about braking,

we have to talk about the footprint of a tire.

So, the footprint is the amount of tire

that actually is in contact with the road.

Yes. The contact patch is basically the only thing

connecting the vehicle to the road.

And of course, the pattern is really important,

as is the compound.

Those are all variables we can control.

What we cannot control is the environment out there.

Temperatures, the humidity or moisture,

even the different road conditions.

To do that, we've built a very sophisticated

indoor test facility in Germany called the AIBA.

Meletis will explain all about that.

Now, the natural next progression

is for the tire to connect to the vehicle.

Nowadays, we can actually talk to the tire.

- Come on, let me show you. - Okay.

[Meletis] We are standing inside the AIBA,

which stands for Automated Indoor Braking Analyzer.

We are at the Contidrom,

which is our testing facility north of Hanover.

We have a variety of tracks.

We have a number of outdoor tracks.

We have a large oval outside.

We have a dry handling facility,

a wet handling facility.

We do have certified noise testing facilities. All of those outside.

But we also have tracks, like the one we're standing in here today,

that are indoor which are, in many ways, special

because of the fact that they're indoor.

So the AIBA is, as the name implies, an indoor facility

that carries out brake tests for us.

The thinking and the beauty behind it is that because we're indoor

we are weather-independent, and we have a system whereby we...

for lack of a better expression, we shoot cars down test track,

and then the braking takes place automatically

so there's nobody sitting in the vehicle.

The engine is not running. The vehicle is braking itself.

We measure the breaking maneuver and we can thus analyze it.

At the end of the track the cars are being turned around automatically

and put back into the lane, if you like, and we can do basically up to four,

one after the other, the whole time.

The idea behind it, as mentioned earlier, is to try to get away

from testing outside for a number of reasons.

Weather-independency is one of them.

Not having to use fossil fuels is another one.

Repeatability and reproducibility of results is very much another one.

And, of course, the fact that this being automated and weather-independent

you can run it 24/7.

- David, let me introduce Carolina Wagner. - Carolina, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too.

This is how we digitalize the tire.

Okay, so now I'm understanding.

So this is the piece of technology that allows you to talk to the tire.

Exactly, and Carolina will explain how this works.

Thank you, Marco. So, did you know that, actually,

one out of three tires are running out there underinflated?

Yeah. Funny story, they're probably my tires.

Okay, then very much applicable.

So, this sensor actually allows us to track temperature,

pressure, mileage, and tread depth through our wirelessly connection

through the truck, through the yard reader, and I can even

check that in my cell phone.

Okay, so that helps me understand how the technology works,

but why would that be important for your customers?

So, to our customers all they care about is to keep up time,

to lower the costs, to improve the performance, of course, of their tires.

We can even help them optimizing their routes.

And ultimately, to the environment, save fuel.

[David O'Donnell] We have had a very special discovery over the last number of years

which we're working very, very hard on.

Natural rubber traditionally has come from Southeast Asia,

various countries much further away,

often from the actual production locations.

What we have worked on intensively is can we go

to an alternative natural rubber?

And what we have discovered is this dandelion you see here,

which has a very high content of natural rubber, the Russian dandelion.

And we have worked intensively with various institutes,

our own internal processes as well,

and developed further the plant but also the type of farming

that's necessary to grow this in an effective way for industrial applications.

We have already manufactured tires directly from the roots of dandelion

in small quantities, but we're still in the process of this ramping up

and discovering the best technology, and the best solution,

and the best content of natural rubber from dandelion.

Surely, what everybody thinks when you see the plants, you immediately zoom in on,

"I've got this in my garden." But, of course,

it's a much more advanced version of that.

We'd be getting a lot more natural rubber content, and this is something

which has to be then progressively improved over time.

It doesn't require an exceptionally special type of soil,

and that would be the advantage.

We could relocate then some of the production of natural rubber

to multiple areas across the globe

and not rely completely on special conditions in Southeast Asia,

South America and so on.

Hey, Tom. Welcome to Inventionland.

-Thanks, George. Thanks for having me. -You bet.

Wait, you brought me some flowers?

My wife might have something to say about that, Tom.

I wanted to leave the future of tires in your hands.

I don't know how you got from flowers to a tire,

but I noticed some printing on this tire I didn't recognize.

- This Taraxa-gum? - Taraxagum.

Taraxagum. All right, what is this? This is some kind of

- new technology? - This is the sustainable tire of the future.

Where we used to extract natural rubber

from trees that took seven-year lifecycles to grow,

now we've taken that same raw material,

that same product out of a Russian dandelion root

to produce a much more sustainable,

much more environmentally-friendly product.

- Really? That's fabulous. - Harvest in only one year.

That's amazing. So, we have a dandelion. What I've seen in dandelions

basically in my life is, you know, these weeds that we go out and we yank on 'em

and try to get 'em out of our grass, but whenever I do that

sometimes I snap it off on the stem and I notice

that there's a white ring around there,

and if you touch it it's really gummy.

It's kind of, like, I guess, the gum of a rubber tree, right?

Absolutely. That's what our R and D team

and our fantastic scientists and chemists came up with, is the idea that we can use

that same resource we got from a tree from a Russian dandelion.

You're taking that, you're gonna now move this into mass production,

or is it already in mass production?

So the tire we sent you is in mass production.

- It's a commercially-available tire today. - Mmm.

We're using the product and testing it today in also passenger tires

as well as commercial vehicle tires, with the long-term introduction

to create a much more sustainable future for our industry.

That's interesting. Yeah, because mostly, I... rubber trees are mostly grown

in tropical, you know, environments.

- This grows just about anywhere, right? - Absolutely.

So, we can move the production of the Taraxagum

- closer to the plants. - Okay.

So we shorten the supply chain as well as exactly what you said.

We're not just limited to tropic environments.

Now we can grow in more moderate climates

and we turn something that was considered a pest

- into a natural form, fit and function for tires. - My goodness.

So, tell me, what's this?

So, this is the voice of the tire.

- So this is our tire module, our latest tire module. - Okay.

It's installed in the tire. It connects to our ContiConnect platform

and transmits data from the tire, through our platform,

- to the cloud. - Okay, so ContiConnect.

That's a cloud-based data collection space, I take it?

That's our cloud platform where we take... we transform the information from the tire,

pass it through a CAN bus in the vehicle or through a telematic system

into the cloud, and then we can share that information

both with our team so that we can produce better products,

as well as with fleet owners who need to know what's going on with

- all of their tires in their fleets. - That's fabulous.

Examples, so we can predict tire replacements. We can detect problems

before they become really big issues,

and if you're a fleet customer that's extremely important.

Very useful. Well, I guess when you sent me this tire

I think you probably thought I was driving a unicycle.

I only got one.

We'll have to get you another one so you can have a full kit for your bike.

- [laughs] Thanks, Tom. - Thank you.

Have a safe trip.

Oh.