Goodyear’s soybean tires can save huge amount of gasoline and energy
Goodyear is on a research that could prove to be a great help by saving 7 million gallons of gasoline annually. Goodyear researchers are testing on soybean based oil as an replacement of petroleum base-oil presently used in the manufacturing of synthetic rubber tires , if not completely, then at least partially. That’s true. The researchers have found soybean oil to be a better replacement for the petroleum based oil Goodyear even claims to save a great amount of energy too as soy-based components are easy to mould into the shape of a tire and would require lesser energy. Moreover, the life span of the soybean-based tires is claimed to be 10 percent longer than those made using petroleum-based oil.
The testing of the tires is in progress, Goodyear might take a few more years to actually put them on sale. That means, you can expect soybean tires anytime in 2015, if Goodyear successfully develops it .
From the point of view of an environmentalist, a tire manufactured using soybean oil instead of petroleum based oil, means saving 5 gallons of gasoline on one tire and annually that will save as much as gasoline as 8,000 American drivers consume in one year. That’s what the data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Transportation says. Goodyear is equally receiving financial support from Soybean Board and in two years, the board has granted $500,000 to Goodyear for research in a period of two years.