Continental Develops Concept Tire Containing Over 40 Percent Recycled Materials

Continental has developed a new passenger car tire engineered with roughly 43 per cent recycled content, highlighting the practical potential of circular raw materials in high-performance electric vehicle (EV) applications. Produced as part of the European Union’s ZEvRA (Zero Emission Electric Vehicles Enabled by Harmonised Circularity) initiative, the concept demonstrates how advanced material recovery technologies can align with strict rolling resistance and safety requirements.

“Circular materials can help save resources and energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They are key to making mobility more sustainable,” Dr. Andreas Topp, head of Platform Development and Industrialization for passenger-car tires at Continental, said.

ZEvRA is a two-year EU project that will conclude in 2026 is aimed at optimizing the circular economy of electric vehicles along the entire value chain. Continental is the only tire manufacturer in the consortium.

The ZEvRA concept recycled materials content includes recycled tall oil, steel, rubber from end-of-life tires and polyester fibers made from recycled PET bottles.  Continental also leverages technologies such as pyrolysis, which involves extracting materials like recovered carbon black (rCB) from end-of-life tires so they can be repurposed for another use.

Since 2023, recovered carbon black has been employed at the Korbach site in all newly produced solid rubber tires. The tires are fitted primarily on forklift trucks. In addition, sand – which forms as a residue in foundries, for example (rSand) – is used in a recycling process to manufacture an alternative silica variant. Recycling keeps materials in circulation and replaces the need for primary raw materials.

The new concept tire highlights the potential of highly circular tire production. The insights gained from this will form the basis for further development of related materials and technologies at Continental, with a particular focus on industrial availability and processing of suitable recycling materials as well as scaling of manufacturing processes. The aim is to further increase the share of recycled materials used in future tire generations.