For many petrolheads, a lap of the Nürburgring is akin to a pilgrimage, and the circuit in Germany’s Eifel region is also a favourite site for performance car developers. Hankook Tire now has a presence in the neighbourhood, too. During a small ceremony held yesterday, the tyre maker officially opened the Nürburgring Workshop, a new branch office of its Hankook Europe Technical Centre (ETC).
Tyres are but one product that may benefit from Continental’s research into integrating printed electronics within rubber. At a facility in Freiburg, Germany, the company is working to digitalise rubber and plastic products that previously only performed mechanical tasks. Work conducted there under the leadership of Dr Tim Wolfer includes the three-year sensIC (sens for sensor and IC for integrated circuit) project, which is being co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to the tune of 2.9 million euros.
Continued disruption, restructuring and re-shaping of the automotive industry will be required to make increasing levels of R&D affordable whilst simultaneously representing a major growth opportunity in the year ahead, according to engineering consultancy Horiba MIRA.
Nexen Tire Europe moved its head office and European technical centre to a new purpose-built 11,000 square metre location in Kelkheim, Germany on 5 September 2018.
According to the company, the Lise-Meitner-Straße site was constructed in less than 13 months, with the focus on making an ecologically friendly building and using materials sourced from local companies.
When Tyrepress.com visited BKT’s new factory in Bhuj, India late in 2015, work had begun on a new research and development centre. The off-road tyre maker reports that this facility is now complete, and it recently inaugurated the ‘Suresh Poddar Innovation Hub’. The centre is named after the oldest of the three Poddar brothers. It is located within a 25-acre area called the Mahabirprasad Poddar Knowledge Center, named after BKT founder, the late Mahabirprasad Poddar.
On August 1, 2017 China National Chemical Equipment (CNCE; also known as ChemChian) and Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Fraunhofer) under Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft signed a strategic cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Munich. According to the MOU, the two sides will cooperate with each other in the fields of new chemical materials, intelligent manufacturing, automation and information technology.
