Potential benefits of Triple-A tyres in the Netherlands
2014
The quality of a tyre has a large influence on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, vehicle safety and noise emissions. Therefore, the use of high-quality tyres could contribute in making vehicles more economic, safer and quieter. For this reason, the ministry of Infrastructure and Environment in the Netherlands has asked TNO and M+P to perform a ‘quick-scan’ study to evaluate the potential of high-quality tyres in terms of energy, safety and noise.
Tyres in the European Union are labelled on each of these three criteria. High- quality tyres are tyres that rate ‘A’ on the topic at hand, and are therefore also referred to as A-rated tyres. Tyres that rate an A on each of the topics energy, safety and noise are referred to in this study as AAA-rated or triple-A tyres. The study assesses the potential benefits of A-rated as well as triple-A tyres. It assumes all currently-used tyres in the Netherlands are replaced by A-rated tyres and compares this situation with a baseline representing the current tyre distribution of the Dutch vehicle fleet.
Replacing the currently-used tyres by A-rated tyres would have a large impact on energy consumption, safety and vehicle noise. The use of A-rated tyres in the Netherlands would save nearly 506 million litres of fuel and would reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 1.3 Mton annually. Yearly, 43 less people would be killed in traffic accidents, and high-quality tyres would result in 260 less serious injuries and 364 less slight injuries. And due to the favourable noise characteristics of A-rated tyres, each year 216000 less people would be highly- annoyed by road traffic and the number a highly sleep-disturbed people would be reduced by 204000.
Assuming the characteristics of A-rated tyres could be combined into one ‘Triple-A’ tyre would lead to the sum of all benefits described above. From a societal perspective, the associated annual cost savings would then amount to nearly one billion Euros. For the end-user, annual cost savings would range from 117€ for passenger cars to 2418€ for long-haul vehicles.
Given the large potential benefits of high-quality tyres, an accelerated market uptake could help in making road transport more environmentally friendly, safer and quieter.