The EU tyre mandatory label is not so new anymore, but it might be worth describing how it works as tyre purchase is not made so frequently. EU’s tyre marking contains the following information to make your tyre selection a bit more informed, fuel economy, wet grip and external sound level. These are shown in a very illustrative way to ensure that you can easily understand and select based on these. They might be the most important selection criteria for you, so it is important to know what will be crucial. Still, these are general criteria and should anyways be maximized if possible.
Suppose we start looking at the fuel economy, where it looks at rolling resistance. It has been estimated that 20% of the car’s fuel consumption is due to rolling resistance. Since fuel consumption is directly associated with CO2 emission, it also impacts the environment. The classification ranges from A to G. A is the lowest and has a green colour, where the G is then coloured red and has the worst level of fuel efficiency.
Then you have the wet grip, which is your safety indicator measured by how quickly a car moving at 80k/h driving on a wet asphalt can come to a full stop. Here it ranges from A to F, where A is the lowest braking distance, and the difference in stopping distance between A and F is four car lengths, which can mean avoiding an accident and being in one.
Finally, you have the noise level that the tyres give away while rolling. This is also to reduce disturbing car noise to the external environment. Here it ranges from soundbars, where the lowest is 1 bar and up to 3 bars, where the one is below the approved level and goes up to 3 bars, which is above the approved level.
This works best for summer tyres. If you are buying winter tyres, there is nothing related to how well they will perform in these conditions, so it is important to factor this into the equation and selection process.
For more information regarding EU tyre labels, visit: https://www.nokiantyres.com/