Goodyear EfficientGrip SUV Tyre Test

Building an SUV tyre that offers both grip and low rolling resistance would seem counterintuitive. Andy Enright speaks to Xavier Fraipont from Goodyear to see how it's done.

Just how difficult can designing a tyre be? It turns out that there's more to it than meets the eye. Most of us give only passing consideration to those four palm-sized contact patches that are the only things keeping us from an appointment with the scenery, but there's a huge gulf between the best tyres and the rest that's not always reflected in terms of price.

Goodyear is launching a tyre specially designed for Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs). Targeted at vehicles such as the Audi Q3 or the Land Rover Evoque, the EfficientGrip SUV tyre needs to be a real decathlete of the tyre world. Whereas a performance road tyre only really has to concentrate on the task of gripping the road and off-road tyres with the job of generating as much traction in mud as possible, a modern SUV is a jack of all trades and needs a tyre that's equally broad in its talents. Therefore it needs to offer decent off-road ability yet ride quietly on road. It needs to offer excellent wet and dry braking grip as well as low rolling resistance for better economy. It sounds an impossible assignment, so I spoke to Xavier Fraipont, Goodyear's Director, Technology Consumer Tyres for a little insight.



Although designed chiefly as a road tyre, the EfficientGrip SUV is also designed for light off-road duties. “It's not as aggressive in its tread design as an off-road tyre like the Wrangler Duratrac, but it retains a high number of biting edges in the tread design. We are homologating the tyre for use as original equipment on the Land Rover Evoque and Land Ro...