◎ Xu Yiming

On August 28, CRIA organized the first working group conference about the industrial standard of Technical specification for product green design evaluation Auto Tires, and set up a working group composed by Doublestar Group Co., Ltd., Shandong Linglong Tire Co., Ltd., Zhongce Rubber Group Co., Ltd., Prinx Chengshan (Shandong) Tire Co., Ltd., Shandong Fengyuan Tire Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Double Coin Group Co., Ltd., Pirelli Tyre Co., Ltd., Aeolus Tyre Co., Ltd., Jiangsu General Science Technology Co., Ltd., Xiamen Cheng Shin Rubber Industry Co., Ltd., CATARC Yancheng Automotive Proving Ground Co., Ltd. and China Quality Certification Centre.

Firstly, Zhu Hong, the director of CRIA Technical Economic Committee, gave an overall introduction to the group standard. On May 28, China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation and CRIA jointly published a group standard of Technical specification for product green design evaluation Auto Tires, which is formally implemented from August 27, 2018 and replaced the former self-regulation standard of CRIA-Green Tire Technical Specification XXZB/LT-102-2014.

At the conference, the working group discussed over the performance of green tires, limited substances and other matters in the standard on the basis of the original group standard and in combination with national laws and regulations, and proposed to add tire renovation and RFID technology application to the industry standard. The working group emphasized that green design products should be based on being pollution-free to the environment, which not only requires tire products to be green and pollution-free, but also requires strict control of energy consumption and resource consumption in the supply chain and production process. “Green” should be throughout the whole life cycle of tires.

Introduced by the experts present at the conference, the output of radial tires of Chinese trucks and passenger cars in 2017 was about 120 million units. The tire RFID technology, on the one hand, enables car owners or teams to know the using condition of tires in real time and make reasonable planning for the use of tires; on the other hand, traceably provides great convenience for tire retrofits and brings huge economic and social benefits that are difficult to measure in terms of money.

The standard of Technical specification for product green design evaluation Auto Tires is applicable to the radial tires of saloon cars, light trucks and heavy trucks, specifying green evaluation requirements of automobile radial tires, the evaluation report preparation methods of product life cycle and the evaluation methods.

Zhu Hong said that the establishment of the industrial standard should conform to the characteristics of the Chinese tire industry, and the change of the current situation featured by low quality and low price competition needs the common efforts in the industry. The industrialization process of Chinese green tires has a long way to go.