Image courtesy - Continental Tire

The global tyre industry faces unprecedented complexity as electrification, sustainability and intelligent vehicle systems reshape demands on materials, design and performance. CenTiRe, under Professor Saied Taheri, bridges gaps between academia and industry, integrating fundamental research with real-world constraints, fostering collaborative innovation and training engineers capable of navigating the evolving landscape of tyre and mobility technology.

The Center for Tire Research (CenTiRe) is a collaborative, industry-led research consortium partnered with Virginia Tech and the University of Akron, established in 2011–12 with seed funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF). At the time, the global tyre research ecosystem was strong in individual areas like materials, testing, vehicle dynamics and manufacturing but fragmented with few environments where these pieces were brought together in a sustained, pre-competitive way.

A critical gap was the disconnect between fundamental research and the practical questions industry engineers faced. Academic work often focused on isolated phenomena, while industry research and concept development (RCD) was under pressure to deliver solutions on compressed timelines.

Foundational problems like tyre-road interaction, variability and system-level behaviour rarely received attention in ways that were both rigorous and industrially relevant. Talent development was another challenge as companies needed engineers who could navigate experiments, modelling and real-world constraints, but training pathways were siloed.

CenTiRe was created to bridge these gaps by exposing students to industry-relevant problems early and consistently.

“Since its formation, CenTiRe’s role has evolved alongside the industry,” said CenTiRe Director and Professor Saied Taheri during an exclusive interaction with Tyre Trends.

“What began as a focus on core tyre mechanics and testing has expanded to include electrification-driven challenges, intelligent tyres, data-driven methods and stronger integration with vehicle control and mobility systems. Perhaps most importantly, the centre has evolved from a research hub to a long-term collaborative platform. Its value today lies not just in technical outputs but in continuity, providing a space where companies can step back from short-term pressures, share understanding and collectively address problems no single organisation can efficiently solve alone,” he added.

Taheri’s own focus on tyre and vehicle dynamics took shape during graduate work at Clemson University and was reinforced by observing how tyres were often treated as secondary in vehicle development, despite being the primary interface with the road.

Early experience across industry and academia showed that many vehicle-level challenges cannot be fully understood without deeper understanding of the tyre itself. Industry work underscored the importance of realism, while academic work highlighted the potential of revisiting often-overlooked fundamentals.

These experiences shaped his approach to applied research, emphasising physical understanding alongside practical implementation. More than three decades in the field have reinforced his belief that the most impactful research occurs at the boundaries between disciplines, organisations and theory and practice, a perspective that continues to guide both his work and CenTiRe.

CONVERGING PRESSURES

Tyre research today is being reshaped by several major shifts occurring simultaneously rather than sequentially, creating a level of complexity that is unprecedented. Electrification, higher instantaneous torque and evolving mobility expectations are placing new and often conflicting demands on tyres.

“Electric vehicles fundamentally alter the operating envelope as high torque at low speeds accelerates wear and introduces new fatigue and durability mechanisms, while increased vehicle mass raises concerns around rolling resistance, heat generation and structural integrity,” said Taheri.

At the same time, customers expect quieter and more comfortable tyres, which can run counter to traditional approaches to stiffness, robustness and durability.

These challenges are compounded by the fact that tyres are increasingly expected to function as part of an integrated vehicle system, interacting closely with advanced control systems, sensors and software.

Yet, physical understanding and modelling capabilities are still catching up, particularly under transient, highly nonlinear conditions that dominate real-world operation.

Taheri adds that sustainability is another critical layer as the industry is under pressure to reduce environmental impact without compromising safety or performance, forcing a rethinking of materials, testing methods and even optimisation criteria.

From a manufacturing and testing perspective, many existing processes were developed for a very different operating regime, assuming steady-state loading, gradual wear and clearly separated performance attributes.

He also noted that next-generation tyres, especially for electrified and automated vehicles, face higher torque transients, tighter noise, vibration and harness requirements and broader duty cycles, exposing sensitivities to material variability, curing and construction that are not always measured or controlled with sufficient resolution.

“On the testing side, a widening gap exists between laboratory validation and real-world use as standardised tests remain essential, but they often fail to capture coupled thermal, mechanical, acoustic and control-related phenomena, leading to continued reliance on correlation rather than true prediction,” contended Taheri.

Shrinking development cycles further strain this system as physical testing is costly and slow, while models and surrogate tests are asked to deliver more insight without always having robust validation frameworks.

“Data analytics and machine learning are beginning to play a meaningful role in addressing some of these pressures, particularly in areas with large, well-curated datasets such as manufacturing quality monitoring and test data analysis, where they can reveal sensitivities and patterns that are otherwise difficult to detect,” noted Taheri.

However, in performance-critical domains governed by strongly nonlinear, physics-driven behaviour, these tools function best as complements rather than replacements for physical understanding.

The most promising advances are emerging from hybrid approaches that integrate physics-based models, experiments and data-driven methods.

Overall, the central challenge and opportunity is not solving any single issue in isolation but developing integrated frameworks that intelligently manage trade-offs, supported by better physics, better data and stronger cross-disciplinary collaboration.

PUSHING THROUGH OBSTACLES

Taheri has been working on tyre-road friction, terramechanics and intelligent tyres for decades and his work is cited globally. However, these areas still remain technically challenging despite decades of prior research.

Commenting on the same, he noted, “These areas remain challenging because they sit at the intersection of multiple uncertainties that are difficult to control, measure or model simultaneously. At a fundamental level, the tyre-road interface is a highly nonlinear, transient and multiscale phenomenon involving viscoelastic materials, evolving surface conditions, temperature effects and micro- to macro-scale interactions that change continuously during operation. Even small variations in road texture, contamination or load can cause disproportionately large changes in friction behaviour.”

In terramechanics, he noted, the challenge is compounded by the deformable and history-dependent nature of the road. Soil properties vary spatially and temporally and rolling fundamentally alters the medium itself, making repeatability and generalisation difficult.

Intelligent tyres add further complexity through sensing, while ensuring robustness, durability and cost-effectiveness is inherently challenging and converting those measurements into reliable, control-relevant information remains an open problem.

“Progress in materials, sensing or modelling often reveals new limitations elsewhere and as vehicle systems evolve, particularly with electrification and automation, the boundary conditions continue to shift. Consequently, these are not unsolved problems but continuously evolving ones, with each vehicle generation raising the bar for accuracy, robustness and integration,” added Taheri.

At CenTiRe, Taheri said, addressing such complexity requires integration that goes beyond organisational structure and is embedded in how research questions are framed and executed.

Problems are defined around physical phenomena or performance gaps rather than along disciplinary lines. This ensures that materials behaviour, manufacturing variability, modelling assumptions and testing constraints are considered from the outset, rather than addressed sequentially.

People, he added, are central to this approach. Students and researchers are deliberately exposed to multiple domains, while industry partners are engaged throughout the project lifecycle rather than brought in only as reviewers. This helps create a shared technical language and reduces the risk of research fragmenting into isolated silos.

“The objective is not to make everyone an expert in everything but to ensure that insights generated in one domain are meaningful, transferable and usable across the others,” Taheri noted.

NEW VISTAS

Taheri views fundamental science and industrial relevance as mutually dependent rather than competing.

“In academia, advancing understanding, especially where assumptions or models fall short, must ultimately inform design, manufacturing or validation to have real impact. At CenTiRe, this balance is achieved by deliberately selecting fundamental problems tied to real-world constraints such as manufacturing variability, testing limits and control-system needs,” he said.

Education is central to this approach as training students to think rigorously while recognising practical constraints creates a vital bridge between science and application. The balance is achieved through alignment, not compromise, by choosing problems where scientific progress and practical implementation advance together.

One area where this is particularly evident is smart and intelligent tyres. “These tyres have the potential to fundamentally change how vehicles perceive and interact with the road, though the transformation will be evolutionary rather than sudden,” noted Taheri.

Traditionally, the tyre has been treated as a passive element in vehicle control with behaviour inferred indirectly from wheel speed, acceleration or yaw signals. Intelligent tyres allow more direct observation of the contact patch, providing real-time data on grip, load, temperature and surface conditions. This can significantly improve control robustness, especially in low-friction or rapidly changing environments.

However, integrating tyre-level information into vehicle control introduces challenges around signal reliability, latency, validation and redundancy, particularly for safety-critical and autonomous applications.

Another key issue is abstraction as raw tyre data must be converted into physically meaningful, trustworthy indicators that can be fused with other vehicle and environmental sensors.

In autonomous driving, intelligent tyres may not act as primary perception sensors, but they can play a critical supporting role by informing systems what is actually achievable at the tyre-road interface, rather than what is assumed.

“Ultimately, this represents a shift from tyres as passive components to active contributors to vehicle intelligence, requiring advances not only in sensing but also in modelling, validation and system-level integration,” said Taheri.

TRUSTED COLLABORATION

Tyre development today faces the formidable challenge of reconciling performance, safety and environmental responsibility across the entire lifecycle. Materials that deliver wet grip, durability and fatigue resistance often carry significant environmental footprints, and replacing them without introducing new risks is technically difficult.

At the same time, improving rolling resistance to enhance energy efficiency, particularly for electric vehicles, can conflict with wear, noise and grip, while higher vehicle mass and torque further complicate trade-offs.

Wear and abrasion present another concern as tyre particles are increasingly recognised as an environmental issue, yet understanding of their generation and transport mechanisms remains incomplete.

End-of-life considerations amplify these challenges, since tyres were not historically designed for disassembly or reuse, making recycling and circularity systemic design problems. Addressing these issues requires lifecycle-based thinking, advanced predictive tools and close integration of materials, manufacturing and vehicle disciplines.

Alluding to these, Taheri noted, “CenTiRe addresses these complexities through a pre-competitive collaborative model that brings together global tyre and automotive companies in a neutral, trust-based framework. By focusing on fundamentals, the centre creates shared understanding while allowing individual companies to retain proprietary advantages in design and implementation. Its role is to reduce upstream uncertainty and risk, providing rigorous, unbiased validation that benefits all members.”

Industry continues to invest in this model because the technical challenges of electrification, system integration and sustainability are too complex and costly to tackle in isolation. Beyond technical outputs, the consortium fosters a shared language, trust and a culture of collaboration that enables competitors to learn from each other without compromising competitiveness.

Looking ahead, the hope is that Taheri and CenTiRe are recognised less as a single person or centre and more as a trusted ecosystem that helped the tyre and mobility industry think more rigorously and collaboratively about tyre performance, safety and sustainability.

“Success will be measured by the engineers trained to bridge physics and manufacturing realities, the risk de-risked through sound modelling and experimentation and the elevated global technical conversation around tyres,” said Taheri.

Equally important is the role of CenTiRe in building bridges between disciplines, companies and generations of engineers, helping the industry better understand and respect one of the most complex yet underappreciated components of mobility.

Over the next decade, this vision positions CenTiRe as both a technical and cultural catalyst for the global tyre and mobility sector. n

Gaurav Kumar has resigned as a whole-time director of Apollo Tyres, the Indian tyre manufacturer, after more than two decades with the company, though he will remain chief financial officer during a transition period.

The Gurugram-based company's board approved the resignation at a meeting on Thursday. Kumar steps down as a director, and consequently as a member of the risk management committee, with effect from the close of business the same day. The company said he had confirmed there was no material reason for his departure beyond that stated in his resignation letter.

Kumar will continue as chief financial officer for such period as is necessary to ensure a smooth transition, after which he will cease to be part of the company's senior management.

In his resignation letter, Kumar said: "It has been terrific to be part of the incredible journey at Apollo Tyres thus far. I have learned, and hopefully contributed in equal measure, and now seek to explore alternative and new challenges. I wish Apollo Tyres the very best for the journey ahead and will always be part of the Apollo Tyres Family." He added that he was grateful to Onkar Kanwar and Neeraj Kanwar for their support during his tenure of more than 22 years at the company.

Neeraj Kanwar, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, said: "Gaurav deserves kudos for the critical role he has played in the growth of Apollo Tyres, both in India and overseas, in the last twenty years. While we do regret losing him, we are conscious of his personal aspirations and wish him the very best in his future endeavours."

The company said it was in the process of appointing a new chief financial officer.

Shrader Tire & Oil (STO) has announced the appointment of Bob Feldbauer to the role of President, effective 1 August 2026. He will concurrently serve as Chief Operating Officer, while Joe Shrader maintains his position as Chief Executive Officer.

Feldbauer’s ascent follows his arrival at STO in early 2025 as Chief Operating Officer, a role built upon a robust industry resume. His prior engagements include a lengthy stint at the helm of Jack’s Tire & Oil in Utah and a substantial period with Michelin North America, where he handled sales and managerial assignments.

Under the new structure, Feldbauer’s purview widens to encompass both internal fleet management across 14 sites and outward-facing commercial development, including alliances and market expansion. With the founding family’s fourth generation now active within the firm, the succession plan reinforces the enduring principles established when the company opened in 1948.

Shrader said, “Bob has proven exactly what we hoped he would when we brought him on board – sharp operational instincts and a real drive to help this company grow. Putting him in the President seat lets us move faster on the growth plans we’ve been building towards.”

Feldbauer said, “It has been a fast year and a half at Shrader Tire & Oil. I have gained tremendous insight and valuable knowledge about our organisation’s structure, company culture and an understanding of our overall goals and commitments. One thing is clearly obvious – the commitment Shrader employees have to deliver the best customer experience each and every time. I appreciate this and look forward to supporting them as their President and COO.”

Balkrishna Industries Ltd. (BKT) has unveiled a brand installation at the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) T2 Elevated Road Underpass as the tyre manufacturer seeks to broaden its positioning beyond its traditional Off-Highway business and strengthen awareness of its expanding on-highway portfolio in India.

The 2,000 sq. ft. installation, inspired by the company's "Elevate Your Drive" philosophy, highlights BKT's portfolio across agriculture, construction, mining, earthmoving, commercial vehicles, two-wheelers and passenger vehicles. The activation comes as the company expands its presence in India's two-wheeler and commercial vehicle tyre segments.

Designed to move beyond conventional outdoor advertising, the installation features nine illuminated tyre-shaped displays, each 8 feet in diameter, using the tyre itself as the central storytelling element. It opens with a large-format visual featuring BKT brand ambassador Ranveer Singh, followed by a sequence of displays illustrating the company's expanding mobility portfolio. The installation will remain at the airport for 24 months.

Mumbai International Airport handled a record 55.5 million passengers in 2025, providing the company with sustained visibility among business travellers and consumers.

"For BKT, innovation goes beyond product engineering; it extends to how we tell our story. This installation reflects a simple yet powerful idea: our tyre itself becomes the medium through which travellers experience the breadth of BKT's world. As we expand our presence across India's mobility landscape, it is important that consumers see BKT not through a single product category, but as a brand that supports movement across diverse terrains, applications and journeys. Mumbai Airport provides an ideal stage for us to express that transformation in a memorable and distinctive way," said Satish Sharma, Senior President & Director – Business Development and Strategy, BKT.

The installation was conceptualised by Infectious Advertising and uses immersive design, sequential storytelling and its airport location to showcase the company's wider mobility portfolio. According to BKT, the activation is intended to connect its established Off-Highway business with its growing presence in India's on-highway mobility market.

Mumbai-headquartered leading carbon black manufacturer Epsilon Carbon has reported a 10 percent reduction in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions across its upstream transportation operations during FY2025–26. The reduction was achieved through the deployment of an electric and liquefied natural gas freight fleet.

An independent third party certified the emissions data. The reductions achieved in transport logistics equate to carbon absorption figures associated with approximately 29,000 trees. The verified figures allow supply chain partners to include these reductions within Scope 3 emissions reporting frameworks and environmental disclosures.

Gaurav Mathur, Chief Executive Officer, Epsilon Carbon, said, “Decarbonising logistics is central to our climate strategy. What makes this milestone meaningful is that the results are independently verified with a 10 percent reduction in CO2e emissions within the upstream transportation category over a single financial year, driven by the adoption of electric and LNG fleets. These carbon reductions strengthen our own sustainability disclosures and those of our customers, and we intend to scale this model across our supply chain.”

Following Phase 1 operations, Epsilon Carbon intends to expand the number of electric and LNG vehicles in its transport fleet during FY 2026–27 to scale low-carbon freight transport across its supply chain network.