Hankook was recognized as the winner in the Automotive and Transportation category at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) 2021, for its innovative project work, ‘Hankook Platform System (HPS)-Cell’. 

This achievement makes Hankook Tire a winner of all three of the world’s most renowned design awards in 2021.

Hankook Tire’s HPS-Cell previously won the ‘Red Dot’ in the Mobility and Transportation category at the Red Dot Design Award: Design Concept 2021 and was announced as the winner in the Professional Concept category at the iF Design Award.

The award-winning HPS-Cell is a modular platform proposed through Hankook Tire’s Design Innovation project, a research project on smart cities and future mobility.

Through joint research, the project puts forward a vision for future driving and solutions that tackle today’s challenges.

Purpose of the project

Unveiled last November, HPS-Cell was an outcome of the Design Innovation 2020 project under the theme ‘Urban Reshaping’.

The project’s purpose is to help visualize the transformation of cities which are geared by mobility reconfiguration as part of living spaces.

This will remove the focus away from stand-alone vehicles where augmented automation, infrastructure and cutting-edge technologies such as eco-friendly technology, autonomous driving and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are to be adopted.

The HPS-Cell is a modular platform based on the tire, with the foundation of mobility, the tire of HPS-Cell is an airless tire featuring unit-cell structure.

It uses sensor technology to not only identify tire treads and road conditions in real time, but also respond to wear-out risks and change tread patterns according to the road condition.

This also involves utilizing variable wheels and optimized infrastructure.

It’s applied with ‘Hankook Innovative Performance (H.I.P)’ which represents Hankook’s technological breakthroughs.