Conti Urban Concept Tire is Driving the Transformation to Sustainable Mobility

Fort Mill, S.C., Dec. 29, 2022 — Continental has developed two green, efficiency-boosting concepts that can make an immediate impact on sustainability efforts: the Conti Urban tire and ContiTread EcoPlus Green concept. The Conti Urban celebrated its world premiere at the 2022 IAA Transportation event and now at 2023 International CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with the ContiTread EcoPlus Green retread. Already approved for road use and ready for series production in the near future, the Conti Urban Green concept tire contains nearly 50 percent renewable and recycled materials while the tread itself is composed of just under 70 percent renewable material. This includes sustainable materials including rapeseed oil, silica from rice husk ashes, and responsibly produced natural rubber. “Our Conti Urban can be retreaded increasing its sustainability and extending its service life,” says Shaun Uys, Head of Replacement, Truck Tire, US. 

When designing the Conti Urban tire, Continental’s tire developers focused their efforts on achieving high energy efficiency and optimizing noise emissions. A special rubber compound in the tread, the wider tire tread and the specially optimized and exceptionally rigid profile help to reduce rolling resistance by 7 percent compared with a current-generation Conti Urban and increases tire life. As always with Continental, all without any compromise on the safety-relevant performance properties.

The noise behavior of the Conti Urban was also specially optimized. Noise frequencies generated while the tire is rolling over the road surface have been distributed over a wider range. As a result, the broader spectrum of different frequency ranges ensures that the perceived noise level is lower. The background to this is that sounds with a monotonous frequency are particularly unpleasant to the human ear. The generation of different frequencies at the same volume, on the other hand, helps to improve the individual's perception of noise. In this way, Continental wants to make a contribution to further reducing noise pollution from urban bus and delivery vehicles in the future.

While retreading worn out tires is a sustainable practice in its own right, Continental takes it a step further with the ContiTread EcoPlus Green concept. Thanks to the high content of renewable materials used in the tread, retreading with the ContiTread EcoPlus Green concept increases the overall share of sustainable materials to 90 percent. This special rubber compound, along with wider tread and exceptionally rigid profile allowed Continental’s tire developers to achieve considerable reductions in rolling resistance and optimize noise emissions.

With tighter margins, increased competitiveness and mounting environmental concerns, fleet digitalization has never been more important to sustainable business operation. For this reason, the Conti Urban concept was designed with built-in intelligent sensors that pair with Continental's tire monitoring platform, ContiConnect. This digital tire management system for fleets large to small serves as the foundation for greener fleet management. ContiConnect digital tire monitoring provides fleet managers with real-time data so they can keep their tires running at optimal performance levels. This improves fuel efficiency, reduces maintenance and replacement costs and maintains operator safety. The modular format of ContiConnect can be tailored to any customer's needs all with the aim of lowering emissions, conserving resources, and keeping vehicles on the road.