Goodyear on road to success with future mobility focus

AKRON—The city appears to be at the center of something big in the world of tech—something with a huge, imminent market. Something that's going to require years, if not decades, of research, development and testing. Something that will help drive Akron's future economy.

Tires.

Those rubber doughnuts that might have been good enough for the old man's Oldsmobile, aren't going to cut it in a world full of electric and driverless cars, Goodyear executives and auto technology experts say.

Tomorrow's tires will have a host of sensors and be almost as smart and sophisticated as the cars and interconnected information systems with which they will constantly communicate, said Chris Helsel, Goodyear's senior vice president of global operations and chief technology officer.

"There are a lot of reasons you want intelligence with tires," Helsel said.

Systems to constantly monitor tire pressure have become as common as power windows. Helsel said the next step will be to make tires that monitor and report temperature, their own tread wear and condition, and then even how much grip a road surface is providing via coefficient of friction measurements.

Such sensor-based technology either is in use or soon will be on Goodyear's test tracks in Akron and San Angelo, Texas, he said, but it won't stop there.

"I believe it will be coming to all tires that everybody buys," Helsel said of the developing technology. "When you're driving, not to freak everybody out, but you basically drive on four palm-sized pieces of rubber that hit the road. ... At that interface is the critical information that says: 'Am I gripping or am I slipping?' Think about being able to put all that information into traction control."

Auto makers already are thinking about it and will demand such features from their original equipment tire suppliers in the future, Helsel said. They want to make their cars safer, and smart tires will be the key to getting the most out of things like anti-lock brakes and traction-control systems, he said.

And that's just in the near term. In the years ahead, autonomous vehicles are not only going to need more information from their tires, they'll be able to do more with that information with their faster-than-human reflexes and ability to analyze conditions.

"People are going to want autonomous vehicles to drive safely in the rain, the snow and ice, just like they do today," Helsel said.

Lawrence Burns agrees smarter tires are key to that being a reality. An author and consultant for companies working on AV technology, including Goodyear, he's also the former head of research and development for General Motors and a bit of driving futurist.

Burns sees a world in which tires don't only communicate with the cars to which they're attached, but their data also will go into larger, shared systems. He envisions riding in cars that use real-time weather data to anticipate frozen road surfaces.

Eventually, they'll also get shared data from the tires on other cars ahead of them on the highway, Burns said. So, if ice actually exists, every car will know exactly when the road will turn slick.

Future cars will combine that data with things like tire pressure and tread wear to provide the most effective braking and cornering and the safest ride possible, according to Burns.

"What an exciting time to be in the tire business," Burns said. "The tire industry today is not a mature rust belt industry, but a technology-driven, very dynamic industry that's going to have a lot to say about how this (AV) industry plays out. ... This, I think, bodes well for tire companies that embrace it."

Georges Aoude, co-founder and CEO of Derq, an AI-driven intelligent transportation company in Dubai and Detroit, also works on self-driving technology and agrees that tires will be critical to AVs' success.

"They are super important," Aoude said of the newest and next generations of smart tires. "Advanced tire-sensors fall under the (category of) in-vehicle sensors and would allow the AVs to proactively understand the 'health' of their tires. More specifically, detecting potential tire-related problems before they happen will help them navigate safely and improve their productivity," Aoude said via email.

Burns and Aoude also think such technology will become more important as more passenger vehicles belong to fleets, possibly being used by consumers who won't buy their own vehicles but will subscribe to a vehicle-sharing service. The owners of those fleets will want to keep their vehicles as safe as possible to protect their customers and avoid liability, as well as to manage their costs more effectively by knowing exactly when to buy new tires.

"They're going to want the safest tire and to know that every time they put a fleet vehicle on the road, it's prepared for the road ... and also gives the most optimized cost per mile," Burns said.

Goodyear gets some less obvious benefits from its R&D work as well. For instance, it's one reason the company's acquisition of Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. in Findlay makes sense, Darren Wells, Goodyear chief financial officer, said shortly after that deal was disclosed in February.

"(Cooper's) R&D footprint is not nearly as broad as ours. They really don't have the equivalent of our fundamental research," Wells said.

But by applying its technical expertise to Cooper's tires, Wells said, Goodyear "can use the additional scale to get more benefit from that work."

All of this bodes well for Akron, which may have lost Goodyear's consumer tire production shops decades ago, but still hosts what are arguably the company's most important R&D and testing facilities.

"We have 700-plus engineers and scientists working in the Akron area," Helsel said.

Akron's importance was evidence when Goodyear recently invested in new simulators to help it test and develop tires. The company purchased three of them in January. Luxembourg, Goodyear's other technical hub, got one, but Akron got two—and only Akron got the more sophisticated, dynamic simulator that Helsel said can more realistically mimic nearly any vehicle for the test drivers that use it. Luxembourg will probably also get one of the dynamic simulators later, he added.

He declined to specify what Goodyear spent on the high-grade simulator—the first to be used in the tire industry—but said "you're talking about millions" of dollars.

Buying one of those simulators for Akron only made sense, Helsel said.

"All of the consumer tire and truck tire (R&D) work for the Americas is done out of here, as well as some consumer stuff for the rest of the world," Helsel said.

This isn't lost on city officials grateful for Goodyear's allegiance to the town, including James Hardy, Akron deputy mayor for integrated development.

"I think a lot of people don't know how much R&D infrastructure Goodyear has in the city—we have more than 700 Goodyear employees focused on R&D every day in the city. They have the test track, the labs, the innovation lab—and there are only four of those in the company," Hardy said. "When you start to think about what it means to our local economy, it's huge."

The need for the R&D that Goodyear conducts in Akron is only going to increase, too, according to those following the company and the AV industry.

"This is not, 'I solve it over two years, and I'm done,' " Burns said.

AVs will continue to need more and more information from their tires in the future, he said. "Moore's law keeps playing out, so the onboard processors keep getting smarter."

Akron will continue to play a leading role in Goodyear's R&D efforts, too, according to Helsel.

"Our commitment to this area is huge—because it's a huge part of what we do," he said.