Recently, Hankook Tire signed a cooperative agreement with Shenzhen Bus Group to supply tires for BYD new-energy electric buses. According to the agreement, BYD new-energy electric buses under the operation of Shenzhen Bus Group will primarily use Hankook tires in the future. While previous to this agreement, BYD has already used Hankook tires as original matched tires for its new-energy passenger cars.

Aiming at three vehicle models of BYD, namely K9, C8 and K7 relating to this cooperation, Hankook offers TBR tires with different specifications for matching, which are 255/70R22.5 AH08, 275/70R22.5 AU81 and 11R22.5 AU81. It is predicted that Hankook will supply original matched TBR tires for more than 4,000 new-energy passenger cars this year.

AU81 is a new TBR tread pattern launched by Hankook in the second half of 2015 specially for the use of buses in urban road and mainly intended for Chinese new-energy bus market. This kind of tire adopts a brand-new design, small incisions on tire shoulder, which enlarges the ground contact area and width of tire shoulder. Moreover, the design of groove with transverse pattern and circumferential pattern crossing and embedding guarantees the balance in the middle of the tire and the strength of tire shoulder patterns. Besides, AU81 can also fully cope with the increase of vehicle weight and change of driving modes and has the feature of environmental protection.