About Bridgestone
Bridgestone is constantly innovating to underline its position as a flag bearer for tyre safety.
New products, new people and new levels of support for its customers continually come to the fore to underline its status as a premium tyre manufacturer and mobility solutions provider. In addition to its industry leading, premium tyre products, Bridgestone offers a growing portfolio of mobility solutions and serves its customers in an extensive retail network with thousands of touchpoints.
And guided by its global corporate social responsibility commitment, Our Way to Serve, Bridgestone is dedicated to shaping a sustainable future of mobility and improving how people move, live, work and play.
In terms of specific tyre safety projects and studies, Bridgestone is the only tyre manufacturer to publish a tyre debris study, in partnership with Highways England, which looked at more than 1,000 tyre remains from the motorway network and the causes for tyre failure.
The tyre debris was taken from cars, vans, commercial vehicles and motorbikes, with under-inflation of tyres a key theme, along with poor vehicle maintenance, both of which accounted for 26% of the entire sample. When considering that dozens of people are killed or seriously injured in motorway road traffic accidents due to ‘illegal, defective or underinflated tyres,’ Bridgestone and Highways England can conclude that simple tyre checks save lives.
In June 2020, Bridgestone also launched a first-of-its-kind monitoring system for detecting tyre damage issues in real-time. Developed on the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP), the system uses algorithms and existing vehicle sensor data to detect events affecting the tyre surface and carcass, and immediately alerts drivers to any issues.
Products:
From a product perspective, the Bridgestone portfolio continues to get stronger and stronger. The company has received a number of positive test results in recent times for its product range, which has been simplified and revitalised in the past two years.
Notably, the new Potenza Sport, the Turanza T005, the Weather Control A005 EVO and the Duravis All Season van tyre are recent additions to the line-up and all (bar the Potenza Sport and Duravis) benefit from Bridgestone’s unique DriveGuard run-flat technology, which allows motorists to keep on moving for 50 miles – at speeds up to 50mph – after a puncture.
Bridgestone has leant on its many years of motorsport experience to produce the Potenza Sport, which is now arriving at dealers. Tested by TÜV SÜD, one of Europe’s most respected independent automotive testing institutes, Potenza Sport achieves the best performance in both dry braking (shortest braking distance on a dry surface) and cornering and straight line stability (maintaining vehicle stability when travelling both in a straight line and through a curve) versus competitors in the premium segment [1] And, with an EU label A-grade in wet grip across its full line-up and deemed best performer in wet cornering and handling in further tests performed by TÜV SÜD[1] , Bridgestone Potenza Sport also offers outstanding wet performance.
Bridgestone’s commercial products also lead the way too, such as the all-new Duravis All Season, Duravis R002 and its range of fuel-efficient Ecopia tyres.
Mobility solutions:
Bridgestone has dovetailed its product portfolio with its mobility solutions offering, which is elevating the company to new heights. Bridgestone is continuing its transformation journey from tyre producer to mobility solutions leader courtesy of Webfleet Solutions. With demand for fleet-based mobility growing year-on-year, fleet managers need more than ever before a reliable and innovative partner to help them maximise their effectiveness and efficiency through increased productivity and minimised total cost of ownership.
Webfleet Solutions allows business processes to be streamlined with seamlessly connected, end-to-end systems, including integrations with applications ranging from transport management systems and on-board cameras, to mileage, route optimisation and HGV specific navigation.