The Yokohama Rubber Co. announced the SensorTire Technology Vision medium and long-term technological development vision for passenger car tire sensors.

The aim of the SensorTire Technology Vision is to support mobility for people from the ground up and contribute to lasting safety and peace of mind while addressing new changes in mobility demand by providing data obtained from SensorTires (Internet of Things [IoT] tires) fitted with sensing functionality to drivers and to diverse external enterprise operators.

Yokohama Rubber will categorize the services to be provided in reference to specific sensing functions and real-time performance. The company will build in stages sensing functions and data analysis and prediction technology suited to each service, and it will broaden the range of applicability of the sensing functions.

An air-pressure alert service for individual vehicle owners and for vehicle operation management companies will be the initial trial, and a tread wear detection function will be added by 2023. This will allow for providing notifications when tire rotation is due and for providing fleet operators with proposals for efficient tire inspection plans.

In the longer term, Yokohama Rubber will move to connect tire data with map data and with traffic-congestion, weather, and other data from vehicles in vehicles’ destination areas to propose safe driving routes as the provision of new value-added information, and the company also aims to provide support for safe and peace-of-mind vehicle-operation management, as in autonomous-driving vehicles and at companies that provide services in connection with MaaS (Mobility as a Service).

Yokohama Rubber, in advance of the formulation of the SensorTire Technology Vision, announced the joint development with Alps Alpine Co., of an advanced passenger car tire sensor at a press conference at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show. In recognition of the need for accommodating CASE (The first letters of “connected”, “autonomous”, “shared” and “services” (sometimes only “shared”), and “electric”) and for advancing the IoT, Yokohama is pressing ahead with development work on new technologies for accommodating CASE.

In the CASE realm of “connected,” it is conducting joint research and development with Alps Alpine with an eye to undertaking solution business that will include supplementing the established function of tire air pressure detection with that of detecting tread wear and road-surface conditions and processing and managing the data obtained with those functions.