Goodyear's Cornstarch Tires Better for the Environment

How do you make a tire green? Goodyear is trying to answer this question by developing a new line of low-rolling-resistance tires made of renewable and sustainable materials.

A typical tire has soot and silicon in its makeup, both of which are petroleum products. Goodyear wants to replace these materials with cornstarch as a way to lower the overall CO2 impact of each tire it makes. Adding a biological component isn’t the only benefit — the tires will also raise overall fuel efficiency for the car that sits on them.

Joining Goodyear is Italian research and development company Novamont, as well as BMW. While environmentally friendly cornstarch tires certainly sound appealing, they still need to live up to the same safety and reliability standards as their soot-and-silicon predecessors.

Goodyear Announces New “Green Filling” for Tires — It’s Made from Cornstarch (AutoblogGreen)