Throughout 2020 Tyres & Accessories has been analysing the tyre choices of UK emergency services fleets. The series began with an investigation into the National Police fleet’s tyre demands, followed by closer looks at the Kent, Metropolitan and West Midland force fleets. At the start of November, we took a look at some key Fire Brigade fleets. Now it is the turn of the Ambulance service.
Michelin introduced the first CrossClimate tyre in 2015 in a move that saw the manufacturer shift from its long-held position of being broadly opposed to all-season tyres on the basis that best seasonal performance is achieved by either summer or winter tyres. However, arguing that the CrossClimate is a summer tyre with year-round capabilities, Michelin pioneered a new category of tyre. The initial CrossClimate was followed by the CrossClimate + and the CrossClimate SUV variants 2017 and now there is the news that a completely revised version – the CrossClimate 2 – is on its way.
Cooper Brothers has moved its wholesale delivery fleet to a Michelin Agilis CrossClimate policy. The family-owned business has been selling and fitting tyres across Lanarkshire for more than 40 years. Keen to get the best policy for its fleet of 20 Ford Transit vans, the company ran a tyre test over several months – fitting five of the vehicles with different brands of tyre.
Construction and property maintenance specialist Princebuild is rolling out Michelin’s CrossClimate+ and Agilis CrossClimate tyres across its entire fleet of 180 cars and vans. The move will ensure its vehicles benefit from traction all year round; the Peterborough-based company made the decision to switch after a meeting with Michelin showed the statistics and improved safety its CrossClimate range of tyres could offer.
For its 2017 all-season tyre test, Auto Bild decided to do something different. Throwing out the standard format of pitting a number of factory-fresh tyres against each other, the German car magazine decided to additionally evaluate how the tyres performed when half and almost completely worn. Test results were published in issue 47/2017 of Auto Bild, and were very good news for Michelin.
With the introduction of the CrossClimate + earlier this year, Michelin made the claim that the snow traction its tyre delivered with a tread depth of only 1.6mm was equivalent to that provided by competitor tyres with tread depths of 4mm. Furthermore, Michelin stressed that its tyres are made to be used down to the legal tread depth limit of 1.6mm. And why not? Changing earlier is simply throwing away good tread rubber.
Winter tyres have always been something of a non-issue with most British motorists, but for years our counterparts in Germany have diligently switched from summer to winter rubber every autumn and then back again in the spring. The head of Michelin considers this largely unnecessary.
Compromise is a word often associated with the all-season tyre segment, and in its 2017/18 all-season tyre test, Auto Express has endorsed the product it views as representing the smallest compromise in year-round UK conditions. This tyre is the Michelin CrossClimate+
Michelin further re-affirmed its opposition to increasing minimum tyre tread depths (and of those that recommend changing tyres at 3mm) on 11 May when the company held a “The truth about worn tyres” demonstration at its ultra-modern Ladoux global research and development centre near Clermont-Ferrand in France. But what is the truth about tread depth? Tyres & Accessories spent a day experiencing some of the differences between tyres currently available in the European market and spoke with the Michelin senior vice president responsible for the firm’s whole-life tyre strategy, Bernard Delmas, in order to find out more.
Michelin’s popular – some would even say trend-setting – CrossClimate tyre is now available to a wide range of SUVs and 4x4s.
The Michelin CrossClimate was the world’s first summer tyre to achieve the 3PMSF winter accreditation, and it has won a string of awards since its launch.
Hot on the heels of the news that Michelin’s year-round summer tyre (the CrossClimate) has beaten all-season tyres at their own game in a magazine tyre test (see “Summer tyre wins all-season test”, which reports on the ADAC test originally published on 22 September), Michelin previewed the next generation of its category-defying product – the CrossClimate+ at the Paris Motor Show at the start of October. In addition to the original product’s unique summer-tyre-with-a-three-peaks-mountain-snowflake qualification, the latest version is said to improve winter performance and consistent whole tread life performance. This latter point picks up on what appears to be an increasingly important theme to Michelin – that tyres should performs consistently well through right up to the 1.6mm legal tread depth limit (see “Michelin reaffirms opposition to 3mm replacement” for more on this).
British Gas states that the Michelin CrossClimate has “exceeded expectations”. Britain’s largest energy provider’s 13,000-strong commercial vehicle fleet has been running on the tyre for more than a year; it switched in mid-2015 after fleet manager Colin Marriott tested the tyre at a launch event in Geneva, comparing the technology to Michelin’s winter and summer tyre ranges, as well as competitors’ all-season tyres. The British Gas deal is symbolic of Michelin’s success in rethinking a tyre to be fitted year-round in moderate climates like the UK’s, set against the sustained failure to increase the share of winter tyres in the country.
Van Fleet World has presented Michelin’s CrossClimate tyre range with a second fleet award in as many months. The tyre was named winner of the Innovation Award at the Van Fleet World Honours 2016 to follow its Best New Product gong presented by Fleet News in March. The latest award was presented to Andy Fern, Michelin’s head of fleet, at the RAC Club in London before an audience of senior executives from across the fleet sector.
The UK consumer-to-consumer reviews website for tyres, tyrereviews.co.uk published its first video tyre test at the beginning of 2016. Asking the question of whether there is a true all-season tyre, the test takes representative premium summer (Michelin Primacy 3), all-season (Goodyear Vector 4Season Gen-2), and winter (Continental WinterContact TS850) tyres, and adds the Michelin CrossClimate. […]
Forecasters are confident of a white Christmas this year, and with cold weather headed our way ATS Euromaster warns that fleet managers must make a considered choice for their tyres to keep their car and van drivers safe while keeping costs low.
Makizox; CC BY-SA 4.0
Michelin