From racing car to mass market: how Michelin created a special tire for electric vehicles

Black rubber, sculpted tread on smooth sidewall. Nothing looks more like a tire than another tire. And yet. The tire of the electric vehicle has little to do with its “ancestor” of the thermal vehicle. Question of “weight”, of “load distribution”, of “passage of the engine torque”, “of efforts and constraints”, machine-gun the R&D engineers in a hurry if you ask them the question. But let’s skip the physics lesson to simply retain the key idea: the tire of the electric car is specific. “The vehicle is more complex, the requirements are greater”, sums up Philippe Jacquin, director of tire development at Michelin.