Perhaps more than one person has wondered if the manufacturing date of a tire affects its road performance; a doubt that may have arisen when replacing the tires of the car or, perhaps, observing the piles of tires for sale by some tire dealer or in some supermarket. The answer to the question is not obvious: “In recent weeks, on a German site specializing in online sales of tires, a request has appeared for a surcharge of 9.90 euros per tire, for tires with a manufacturing date of 2021. One request not justifiable from any point of view, especially from the technical point of view “, Fabio Bertolotti Director of Assogomma states in an official note:” It is understood that the tire is a perishable product like a food and therefore its value may be correlated to the date of its production, that is to its ‘freshness’. A misleading commercial proposal since, in the face of a greater outlay, the consumer does not obtain any technical performance advantage because this plus does not exist. Tires are not perishable products. A price increase, based on the freshness of a tire, as well as being technically unjustifiable, goes in a diametrically opposite direction to the guidelines of sustainability that tire manufacturers already follow and will follow more and more in the future “.
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In other words, tires do not have an expiry date. The production date shown on the shoulders of the tires – mandatory in the EU – is instead used to track and trace the production lot in case of possible non-compliance, but it is information that has no use for the final consumer, i.e. for the motorist.
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The duration of a tire installed on a car rim, on the other hand, “is mainly influenced by the conditions of use, that is the combination of driving style and the vehicle on which the tire is mounted”, they say from Assogomma, specifying that consumption depends by variables such as the loads to which the tire is subjected, speed, maintenance of the inflation pressures, type and conditions of the roads traveled, impacts due to potholes and pavements, exposure to atmospheric agents (sun, water, temperatures, etc.). But even before its entry into service, “the life of a tire is determined by the conditions in which it was stored until the moment it was mounted on a vehicle, in fact the state of conservation is directly related to correct storage. Temperature, humidity, sources of heat, light and ultraviolet rays, contact or proximity with other substances such as solvents, hydrocarbons, oils and greases are all factors that affect the state of the product “.
