"We hope in 2020 we will be able to show the first tire made of wood", Cyrille Roget, Michelin's worldwide director of scientific and innovation communication said to Australian online magazine motoring.au. Roget points out that such a switch offers considerable benefits - apart from reduced oil consumption he mentions lower production costs as well as local sourcing.
The wooden tires will still contain rubber and other components, but the elastomers usually extracted from oil will be replaced by wood chip-based materials. After all, this still makes 80% of the tire. A little anecdote on the side: Michelin invented the first ever steel tire in 1913 which replaced wooden tires back then.
"We have a project working with wood chips. We will use the waste from the wood industry to create elastomers that come into tires", Roget informs.
