EV tires

Every EV-specific tire with a public story was built with a carmaker in the room. Kenda developed the Klever S/T around Slate's electric pickup, pairing a low rolling resistance design with reinforced construction for the truck's weight and torque, and it fits from the start of production in November 2026. Continental's EcoContact 7 S went through Volvo approval for the EX60 in a staggered 20-inch fitment, with dimples moulded into the sidewall to cut air turbulence behind the tire. Nexen began supplying BYD for export models in June 2026.

Of 238 patents on EV tires, 196 are Chinese filings, and the top of the list is Zhongce with 24, Qingdao Doublestar 13, Jiangsu Enbang 12, Kenda 11, Shandong Huasheng 8 and Linglong 7. Michelin holds 3, Pirelli and Sumitomo 2 each, and Continental 1.

A Korea University and Hankook collaboration built an open silica network by bridging particles with a silane-terminated polybutadiene. Tan delta at 60 °C, the lab stand-in for rolling resistance, fell about 30 percent, and abrasion resistance improved in the same compound. Both moving the right way is the part worth pausing on, because the simple trade-off says one should pay for the other. The mechanism is dispersion: the bridges keep silica aggregates apart, so less energy is lost to particles rubbing against each other, and the same network holds the rubber together under shear.

Hankook reported record quarterly tire revenue of 2.81 trillion won in the third quarter of 2026, and beat expectations on operating profit by raising the share of high-priced products. Over the same quarter Nexen's revenue rose 4.4 percent and its operating profit fell 61.1 percent.

Chinese brands passed half of China's passenger-car original fitment in 2026, at 53 percent against 47 percent for foreign brands, with Linglong at 21.8 million tires supplied. That is the volume end of the market, and it is where the filing activity sits.

The layout is now conventional across the filings: a stiff central rib, longitudinal grooves either side of it, shoulder blocks cut by transverse grooves. What the newer documents claim is dimensional. A Shandong Huasheng and Hongsheng filing for a new-energy-vehicle tire fixes each longitudinal groove at 5 percent of the contact width, give or take one percent, and sets two depth ratios for the inner and outer groove pairs at 0.85 to 0.91 and 0.63 to 0.68. Aeolus takes the same architecture to electric buses and claims a vine-shaped oblique groove layout that spreads airflow sideways while also resisting uneven tread wear.

Five published estimates of the current market span a factor of seven.