There
are a lot of tire manufacturers around the world. As tires
are meant to wear out, you can imagine based on the amount of
vehicles that roll on our roads all around the world how many tires
are used per year. Some are top-tier manufacturers and other are more
targeting the cheap tire market, more or less copying what the big
ones do and just try to do it cheaper.

What
differentiate the big ones?

The
big manufacturers invest a lot of money on a yearly basis for
research and development, constantly trying to develop better tires
and to improve existing tires. The test tires every day in all
different types of environments and on all different surfaces.

They
need to have big test centers where they can test drive their tires.
Having test places all around the globe is not cheap, but it gives
you the best foundation for learning, so that they can constantly
improve the tires. If you compare tires, you can see that the tire
tread will look somewhat different. There is a lot of testing and
figuring out how to best design them to reach the best performance
out of the tires.

The
use the best materials and they don’t cut corners. The development
teams are just working on finding the best possible results. Some of
the toughest tests are done in the artic temperatures trying to find
the best winter tire. A
tire that can have the best grip and provide the best safety
regardless of what weather you are up against.

What
do the others have in common?

They
tend to dissect the good tires and try to rebuild the tires based on
that, to copy the tread design, without all the time understanding
all the reasons for every sipe and every block on the tyre. The
materials selection is rarely the best quality in order to keep the
prices down. This can often be seen from the rolling resistance,
where the cheaper tires tend to have a higher rolling resistance and
will thus consumer more fuel. The wear is also increased so even
thought the tires where cheaper to purchase you have to purchase
another set sooner than you would have to if you purchased a high
quality tire and during the whole time you were driving on the
cheaper tires you were spending more money on fuel that you would
have. If the braking distance is longer than with high quality tires,
you are then also having a higher probability to be in an accident,
so you are less safe while you are driving. You can then ask yourself
if you made a good decision. You paid more and were less safe.

You
rarely see cheap tires ending up high in the tire tests and there is
a simple reason for it, you can only gain knowledge by continuous
testing and learning and then improve the product based on that
learning.