Hacker News Reader

Comment by _dark_matter_ | Hacker News Reader

Can you link to this research? Is there any tire company using this technology? If the people cared we could either pay a premium for them, or regulate

View on HN

Yes! All the big tire companies, Goodyear, Michelin and Firestone have a "natural rubber" development department and every couple years they come out with a "green tire" which they quickly drop and forget about.

As for the "technology" of natural rubber, yes again, ALL military aircraft tires are only natural rubber, people know, when it matters use ONLY natural rubber.

Again, we use choose to use and pollute with synthetic rubber because it is more profitable for the companies to sell us more tires that ware out more quickly. They know this and its on purpose.

[1] https://hcs.osu.edu/our-people/dr-katrina-cornish

This is a naive and incorrect view of economics. Tire manufacturers employ synthetic rubber because that's what consumers want (probably because it's cheaper even when accounting for the lower longevity?). They do not just get to dictate which products enter the market.

Which makes me highly doubt your claim that natural rubber tires are both superior AND cheaper. If you are right about that, I'm sure there are VCs who would be more than happy to fund you...

That's the point, natural rubber tires are slightly more expensive. I think the parent said it was like 5% more somewhere above? Tire companies will go the cheapest route every time, so it's up to the government to make it more expensive to create synthetic rubber tires. Maybe start charging them for ocean cleanup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com