Abrasion Resistant Tires

WP.29 adopted the abrasion regulation for passenger and van tyres at its June 2026 session. Stage 1 approvals begin on 30 June 2028, with a tighter Stage 2 in 2033 and 2035. The index limit is 1.00 against a standard reference tyre, measured either over roughly 8,000 km of public road or 5,044 km on an indoor drum.

The pattern is easiest to see from outside the compound. Tread design changes where the contact patch presses hardest, so that one part of the tread stops doing most of the work. Application engineering pours a polyurethane tread onto a treated rubber carcass, where the bond is made chemically at a ground interface rather than in a mixer. Reinforcement components sit on the bond between fibre and rubber under the tread, which is the same interface with a textile on one side.

Commercial operators price tyres per kilometre, and the arithmetic rests on retreading and regrooving as much as on the first tread life. Retreading delivers 80 to 90 percent of original tread life at 40 to 50 percent of the new-tyre cost. A four-life casing policy on European truck tyres expects 180,000 to 250,000 km on the first life and further mileage from each regroove.

By publication year, 301 documents appeared in 2021, 246 in 2022, 205 in 2023, 235 in 2024, 299 in 2025 and 266 in 2026 up to late October. The headline is a field that dipped and recovered to roughly where it started.

Filler content keeps climbing: above 90 parts silica per hundred rubber, and more than 60 percent silica against 85 percent isoprene in heavy-duty compounds. That bet has been tested in the open literature, and the answer is qualified.

ENSO claims up to 35 percent less particulate pollution and up to 10 percent more range, from what it describes as modified polymer compounds and tread design, sold first into high-mileage taxi and delivery fleets through partners such as Uber. Those are company figures, and no independent test of them is public.