Black Is Dead: China Introduces Colored Tires

by Tycho de Feyter

Published: December 3rd, 2011

black is dead china introduces colored tires

TTAC readers certainly were fascinated with the fascination with white wall tires on the part of the Chinese military (the white is just painted on, don’t worry, and the paint easily comes off.) Now for something REALLY whacky:

What about pink tires under your pink Ferrari California? In China, this is made possible by Double Star Tires from the great city of Qingdao in Shandong province. Double Star developed a patented process to make tires in any color. Fittingly, this new product is called ‘Rainbow.’ The bonbon-colored tires will hit the market soon and likely with great success. At least in China.

Here, the colored tires come down the production line. Double Star sees many possibilities. Apart from adding some color to the otherwise average automobile, there could be green tires for the military, red for the fire department, yellow for school buses. You get the idea. It is not yet clear how much a set of pinkies will cost. Double Star only said the colored tires will be ‘slightly more expensive’ than standard black.

This should be a very popular color in China.

Bright yellow, green and pink at a trade show. Quite a contrast to the uniform color of the uniforms.

I think this is a great idea. Next step is to make tires with more than one color, or fluorescent colors, or some truly rainbow-tires, or pink with white dots, or tires with cartoons on it. Hello Kittie tires? Rainbow tires for, you know?

China, the land of opportunity.

Dutchman Tycho de Feyter runs Carnewschina, a blog about cars in China, from Beijing, China. He also collects die-cast models of Chinese cars.

#China #ColoredTires #TychoDeFeyter

Tycho de Feyter

More by Tycho de Feyter

Comments

Join the conversation

2 of 50 comments

BingoUsedTires on Dec 23, 2012

Since I deal with used tires predominantly I'm interested in the tire characteristics as mentioned in some of the earlier posts. How does the color additive affect the major tires property characteristics as compared to the standard black carbon tires? As a special order item, I would think there is a market out there for tricked out cars. Moe - http://bingotires-charlotte.com

Like Reply
Mr. Edward Mann on Jan 10, 2013

How about tye-dye tires? Could those be popular?

Like Reply

Recent Comments

W Conrad I'm not afraid of them, but they aren't needed for everyone or everywhere. Long haul and highway driving sure, but in the city, nope.
Jalop1991 In a manner similar to PHEV being the correct answer, I declare RPVs to be the correct answer here.We're doing it with certain aircraft; why not with cars on the ground, using hardware and tools like Telsa's "FSD" or GM's "SuperCruise" as the base?Take the local Uber driver out of the car, and put him in a professional centralized environment from where he drives me around. The system and the individual car can have awareness as well as gates, but he's responsible for the driving.Put the tech into my car, and let me buy it as needed. I need someone else to drive me home; hit the button and voila, I've hired a driver for the moment. I don't want to drive 11 hours to my vacation spot; hire the remote pilot for that. When I get there, I have my car and he's still at his normal location, piloting cars for other people.The system would allow for driver rest period, like what's required for truckers, so I might end up with multiple people driving me to the coast. I don't care. And they don't have to be physically with me, therefore they can be way cheaper.Charge taxi-type per-mile rates. For long drives, offer per-trip rates. Offer subscriptions, including miles/hours. Whatever.(And for grins, dress the remote pilots all as Johnnie.)Start this out with big rigs. Take the trucker away from the long haul driving, and let him be there for emergencies and the short haul parts of the trip.And in a manner similar to PHEVs being discredited, I fully expect to be razzed for this brilliant idea (not unlike how Alan Kay wasn't recognized until many many years later for his Dynabook vision).
B-BodyBuick84 Not afraid of AV's as I highly doubt they will ever be %100 viable for our roads. Stop-and-go downtown city or rush hour highway traffic? I can see that, but otherwise there's simply too many variables. Bad weather conditions, faded road lines or markings, reflective surfaces with glare, etc. There's also the issue of cultural norms. About a decade ago there was actually an online test called 'The Morality Machine' one could do online where you were in control of an AV and choose what action to take when a crash was inevitable. I think something like 2.5 million people across the world participated? For example, do you hit and most likely kill the elderly couple strolling across the crosswalk or crash the vehicle into a cement barrier and almost certainly cause the death of the vehicle occupants? What if it's a parent and child? In N. America 98% of people choose to hit the elderly couple and save themselves while in Asia, the exact opposite happened where 98% choose to hit the parent and child. Why? Cultural differences. Asia puts a lot of emphasis on respecting their elderly while N. America has a culture of 'save/ protect the children'. Are these AV's going to respect that culture? Is a VW Jetta or Buick Envision AV going to have different programming depending on whether it's sold in Canada or Taiwan? how's that going to effect legislation and legal battles when a crash inevitibly does happen? These are the true barriers to mass AV adoption, and in the 10 years since that test came out, there has been zero answers or progress on this matter. So no, I'm not afraid of AV's simply because with the exception of a few specific situations, most avenues are going to prove to be a dead-end for automakers.
Mike Bradley Autonomous cars were developed in Silicon Valley. For new products there, the standard business plan is to put a barely-functioning product on the market right away and wait for the early-adopter customers to find the flaws. That's exactly what's happened. Detroit's plan is pretty much the opposite, but Detroit isn't developing this product. That's why dealers, for instance, haven't been trained in the cars.
Dartman https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-fighter-jets-air-force-6a1100c96a73ca9b7f41cbd6a2753fdaAutonomous/Ai is here now. The question is implementation and acceptance.