Tires from Russian dandelion made? It could happen

Mark Duncan / AP

Today's tires consist largely of natural rubber and petroleum derivatives, but manufacturers are looking for alternatives.

By Paul A. Eisenstein, NBC News logged-in user
If demand for tyres will keep and raw material shortages exist, can drive you soon on flowers and beans.

With more and more cars on the road everywhere from Beijing to Boston, tyre manufacturers were hard-pressed nagging shortages of factory capacity problems, to overcome rising material costs and limited availability of natural rubber.

Manufacturers, such as Bridgestone and Goodyear leads in search of alternative materials such as soybean and Russian dandelion.

"Natural rubber is a sustainable, renewable resource, but the problem is that the industry so Apache - building 82 million cars in the year jetzt-- that keep a problem grows," said Michael Martini, President, original equipment tire sale for Bridgestone of Americas. "So we are looking for alternatives."

India also known as rubber or rubber, natural rubber is mainly formed by manipulating LaTeX by tapped rubber trees collected. Bridgestone relies on plantations in Liberia and Malaysia, but their competitors in turn to resources in other parts of the world: Africa and Asia, South America and the Indian subcontinent.

Frenchman Charles Marie de La Condamine first some basic features of the material described in 1736 and 34 years later British scientist that the Joseph Priestley pencil was discovered that the material well rub, marked paper, hence the name, rubber. But the large breakthrough came in 1839 as the American Charles Goodyear discovered the process of vulcanization, which the natural material in long-lasting tires may be used.

These days, the black Donuts contain a mixture of compounds including Bisphenol, soot, sulphur and peroxide and various petroleum derivatives and reinforcement of the materials as steel, polyester and nylon on your car. Natural rubber is still around 25% of the weight of a typical car tires, and even more for those used on commercial vehicles.

The problem is that that vehicle sales are booming as Martini. While sales in existing markets of United States as, Japan and Europe may be relatively stagnant or declining, emerging markets are almost exponentially. The Chinese market alone is no longer just a few million vehicles a year to almost 20 million in a decade and is expected to reach 30 million by the end of the Decade.

It takes about seven years for a rubber plant from seedling to a productive, tires go. And another problem is to find more land for the expansion of plantations.

So, some members of the tyre industry PENRA-have-the program for the excellent natural rubber alternatives-based at the Ohio State University Ohio agricultural research and development center connected. Much promising alternative is one of the Russian dandelion, whose tribal structure seems extremely well to produce what from an almost identical with, common rubber tree or hevea comes from natural latex.

Botanist know the plant as Taraxacum Kok-saghyz-not the common dandelion, this is the curse of the struggling American homeowners keep to their lawns green.

"We know that it more than 1,200 species of plants from which natural rubber in theory could be harvested, but search, which may practically produce the quality and rubber required, the requirements of today's tire market is a challenge, said Dr. Hiroshi Mouri, President of Bridgestone Americas Center for research and technology."

Among the many possible alternatives researchers on guayule, a shrub, have zeroed the southwestern United States and Northern Mexico native of.

Tiremakers have also worked with synthetic alternatives to rubber. Such alternative was crucial for the American effort in the second world war, when supplies of natural rubber by Axis powers were largely cut off. The disadvantage is that plastics are largely dependent on the oil.

The tyre industry is supposed to find not only sustainable alternatives to natural rubber, but they now use mainly oil come with alternatives for some of the non-renewable materials.

The Goodyear Innovation Center has a new method could come up with, the researchers believe, replace soy oil for more than 7 million gallons of oil per year. Another advantage is that the alternative ingredient appears to be able to improve tread life of less than 10 percent.

"Consumers benefit through improved tread life, Goodyear receives with increased efficiency and energy savings and we all win when there are positive effects on the environment," said Jean-Claude Kihn, Goodyear of the technical head of the Office.

The project, financed by a grant of $500,000 from the United Soybean Board soy-based tyre testing see prototype this year start. If it lives up to expectations they consumers until 2015 reach, Goodyear said previously.

General Motors is trading at an all-time low and Ford is at its lowest level in more than a year. Michaeli, Citi auto analyst and Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of Edmunds Italy provide perspective.

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NYT: Retro Russian import attracts older, simpler driver

IRBIT, Russia - this is the story of how a dying Soviet-era met industry and an aging population of bikers in the United States and happiness together on the streets and highways of America found.

Think of it as easy rider, the golden years.

It began as a matter of survival for the Irbit the signature Ural had motor works, font kitchen for decades with side-car plant motorcycle, but who discovered that the business in the post-Communist sunset like so many other Soviet company sputtering was.

Irbit found salvation in a unlikely niche: older American riders, the utility, not thrill or damage by liquids. Suddenly had the side-car, a World War II newsreel, a new life under the late Middle-aged evoke a seemingly anachronistic product.

The company moved its sales strategy overseas in the 1990s and today, despite its deep roots in Russia as the purveyor to the Court of the Red Army, it transmits 60 per cent of its production in the United States.

On the target male consumers is the ideal of born to run by a motorcycle Mama on the back of a spouse or girlfriend riding next to the dog or the food given way.

Irbit and its dealers say their is older bikers core market, but combination has also started the bike fitted with a younger generation of riders, couples pick up that his find appealing.

"In the Soviet Union, the bike was a workhorse," said Vladimir N. Kurmachev, Irbit's factory Director. "Now it's an expensive toy."

David Reich, 65, a retired Carpenter in Salem, Oregon/United States, bought a white Ural patrol from a car dealership there last year.

"It is something that my wife and I both enjoy", he said in a telephone interview. You than buying two bikes, he said, but his wife Jeanne, chose the sidecar to would get no motorcycle license. Also, she could chat while touring.

"I have a ball!" Jeanne Reich wrote in an E-mail. "I enjoy cruising along a few inches from the road with nothing to do but take in the view."

Peter TerHorst, the spokesman for the American motorcycle Association, said the average age of the 230,000 members of 48. When people strength and coordination to disappear, he said, "You see how they transition to the sidecar."

"Elder couples say, that it is simply not convenient to double," Mr. Kurmachev said during a tour of the workshop, where vehicles drawn by them are polished, painted and standard installed on almost any bike.

Irbit, known by its Russian acronym IMZ, says that it is the only motorcycle manufacturer in the world has to sell trailers in the volume. some BMW and Harley-Davidson dealers have them as options, sold, although Harley sidecar production is set.

Transport units, said while the motorcycle market in the United States, Ty van Hooydonk, popular still account for a fraction with some drivers, a spokesman for the motorcycle industry Council, a trade group. He said the makers of sales does not open.

Irbit's factory is located on the edge of a dilapidated city of wooden buildings and rutted dirt roads on the Siberian side of the Ural mountains, with a statue of Lenin still on the main square. It works, but on the strong diminished capacity years, when it produced up to 130,000 vehicles a year compared with its heyday of the 1970s. Assembly lines have closed and the bikes are now built by hand.

A ride in a sidecar can either exciting or terrifying for them not accustomed, feel. Set low to the ground, tends the sidecar rise into the air to right round. The bike is street legal in all 50 States. But because the entire three-wheeled contraption legally is a motorcycle, no seat belt is provided or required. With United States sales rising, Irbit says that the air bag for the sidecar studied it.

The Urals is a motorcycle of heavy, 40 PS whose two cylinders side protrude from the frame. It is modeled after an end of the 1930s years BMW sidecar bike R71, Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union provided called, after the countries signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. When the Nazis broke this Pact and the Russians used the bicycle to combat them.

Irbit stopped military models 1955 build and began focusing on a civilian market of Hunter, outdoor enthusiasts and owners of holiday homes.

With the end of the command economy, subsidized steel and cheap labour, the factory was forced to increase its prices, and sales in Russia fell sharply. Older vehicles drawn by them in Russia with hay, to see head of lettuce and planks of wood. Irbit sold only 20 motorcycles in Russia last year, and the owners say that the factory without sales in the United States would be dead.

Before the recent recession of Irbit 650 sold Ural per year in the United States, and says that it on the way to that level this year again, reaching 48 dealers around the country. A low end Ural sidecar sold combo for about $10,000. Over all, the factory plans for the construction of 1,100 units in 2011.

The popularity of sidecar in America has been fueled by motorcycle enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest, where bicycles were imported in small numbers first in 1993.

Bikers were fascinated from the Ural retro-design, and some got a kick out of the mount machine gun on the model exported to America - a feature that had long since disappeared from the Soviet civil machines.

"Our customers had to fake machine guns," said Jim Petitti, the owner of Raceway services in Salem, Oregon/United States, a Ural dealer by phone. "It faded kind of because the police they were such hassle."

Sale of Urals picked up as traders appeal to older couples not more happy riding on the same seat identifies the bicycle.

"Together for years, was riding husbands and wives have", said Mr. Petitti, characterize typical Ural clients. "Finally the old solo bike is too heavy to keep up to." The woman wants to ride behind the husband. You can not see. "Available with their own cockpit, and it the adventure is ready, again."

Irbit says that while older bikers it carried through a difficult spell, younger American couples also drawn.

"they are good looking bikes," Elena Gonzalez said, 24, a nurse, in a telephone interview from Miami, where she lives with her new husband, John, a firefighter. The couple ride of their Ural mountains after their marriage.

"We wanted to get a soda, and then we thought, 'you let just go us on the bike, it is fun,'," said Mrs Gonzalez.

Norman Mayer son contributed reporting.

This story, "retro import Russia attracts older, easy riders," originally in the New York Times appeared.

Copyright © 2011 New York Times

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