Hankook Tire America Corp. will equip the first all-electric sports car from Porsche — the Taycan — with its Ventus S1 evo 3 ev tires.
The Porsche Taycan will be fitted with size 225/55R19 XL 103Y tires on the front axle, and 275/45R19 XL 108Y tires on the rear axle. Hankook says the Ventus S1 evo 3 ev tires, which will bear the Porsche NF0 symbol on the sidewall, contain a lot of technical refinements for the electronic sports car.
"We are proud to equip the first fully electric sports car from Porsche with our tires," says Hyunjun Cho, head of Hankook's original equipment tire division. "Providing the original equipment for sporty premium vehicles is already a tradition at Hankook. Our engineers have shown that with our products we are well prepared for the new demands in the field of electric sports cars and are therefore well positioned for the future."
Hankook says the tread pattern of the Ventus S1 evo 3 was adapted in the ev version for Porsche to reduce specific tire noise detectible due to the absence of the engine noise. To meet the extra demand of the high performance of the electric sports car, the tire's bead was reinforced with so-called bead-packing technology, as well as high lateral stiffness for precise handling even at high speeds.
"With the tire development for the Porsche Taycan, our development team has moved into completely new dimensions and we are proud of the result," says Moonhwa Hong, vice president of the OE development department at Hankook. "For the original equipment engineers, such a development project represents a special challenge — because solving the conflict of objectives for optimizing the various performance criteria in an e-vehicle like this high-performance sports car requires the highest level of expertise and the latest technologies."
To meet the specific demands of an electric vehicle such as the Porsche Taycan, Hankook's developers also discovered a vulcanization process that balances temperature, time expenditure and pressure. As a result, Hankook says the Ventus S1 evo 3 ev achieves 30% greater durability compared to a standard tread compound. Abrasion resistance was improved by 5% compared to the conventional model and rolling resistance was improved by 13% overall, the company said.
