Tesla service chooses Goodyear as tire tech tester

Few brand names generate quite as much excitement as Tesla these days, so Goodyear’s deal to study and model the manufacturer’s tires is sure to spark a lot of industry interest.

Tesloop, Inc. — a California-based start-up — is building the world’s first software-driven “shared passenger transportation” fleet, allowing passengers to ride in a semi-autonomous vehicle for distances between 50 and 300 miles. Goodyear has signed a technology agreement with the company to evaluate and model tire performance based on the data generated by the company’s fleet of Tesla vehicles it uses for its city-to-city mobility service.

Tesloop has been collecting data at a rate approaching 20,000 miles per month on each vehicle since it launched the service in July 2015. The company’s first vehicle in service, a 2015 Tesla Model S, has now travelled about 250,000 miles — running exclusively on Goodyear tires.

Tesla taxi travels 250,000 miles

Goodyear vice president of global innovation Jim Euchner said: “Our goal is to ensure that we can offer the most innovative range of tire-related technologies and services for the next generation of connected passenger mobility fleets.

“Tesloop’s leadership in the utilization of semi-autonomous, connected, electric cars gives us insights today into the next generation of ‘mobility’ where driving vehicles 250,000 miles a year may be a common occurrence.”

The research Goodyear will be involved in will initially focus on creating and validating predictive models for tire wear using cloud-based machine learning and predictive analytics systems. A further goal is to create data-driven triggers to optimize tire maintenance procedures.

“We know that the ability to gather real-time information about the road, driving conditions and driving patterns will play an increasing role in optimizing tire performance for autonomous vehicles,” Euchner said.

“With increasing amounts of data being compiled from an array of vehicle sensors as well as internet data sources, there is an unprecedented opportunity to create a new real-time digital framework that may enhance both safety and range, while lowering operational costs.”

Get used to it; this is the future

Tesloop’s chief executive Rahul Sonnad said he believes all the top passenger mobility services (the sort of thing we used to call taxis, or even Uber, possibly even buses) will migrate to autonomous, electric, supercharged vehicle platforms over the next few years.

“This will drastically lower the cost of car transportation, increase miles driven and enable cars to run nearly 24 hours every day,” he said. “With the advent of the autonomous, connected, electric car, the automobile is undergoing its most transformative upgrade of the last 100 years.

“More than just cars, our vehicles are effectively nodes on a deeply-digital electric transportation network. And in this world, tires are by far the most important ongoing maintenance cost factor.”

Tesloop has become the highest-rated transportation service in the world and is continuing to expand.

Tagged: Semi-autonomous cars

Tesla service chooses Goodyear as tire tech tester