Hankook Tire to supply tires for Porsche

Woo Byung-il, right, senior vice president of Hankook Tire’s Global Original Equipment Division, speaks about the company’s supply plan for supercar makers during the company’s brand experience day event at Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Hankook Tire

By Park Jin-hai

Korea’s leading tire maker Hankook Tire announced on Tuesday that it has begun supplying German supercar maker Porsche.

Its ultra-high performance tire Ventus S1 evo2 SUV will be used on Porsche Macan SUVs across the world. It is the first time that a domestic tire maker has supplied tires to Porsche, according to the company.

“It is never easy to supply for Porsche, since the German carmaker requires top-level quality. Porsche has gone through seven inspections at our Hungarian production facility as well as lane change tests at speeds of over 220 kilometers per hour,” said Woo Byung-il, senior vice president of Hankook Tire’s Global Original Equipment Division, during the brand experience day event at Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province.

“We are proud that our tires are the only auto part in the vehicles that bear the supplier’s name. Although we started with the Porsche Marcan, we will expand lineups to other models,” he said.

The Ventus S1 evo2 SUV is the outcome of three and a half years of research to meet the special needs of Macan, said the company. Applying Dual Layer Tread technology, the tire minimizes the effect of wear on wet tire performance by exposing high-grip rubber as the tire wears, enabling optimized grip and sporty handling under extreme weather conditions, the company said.

Based on its technology for high-performance tires ― sealant, run-flat and silent tires ― the company said it will supply tires to other supercars by 2020.

“We aim to supply our tires for the Porsche 911, and in fact, two additional Porsche models are in discussion to use our tires.”

Currently it provides mostly run-flat tires to BMW and Mercedes, and sealant tires to Volkswagen.

The company said that starting with the Macan, it plans to supply Hankook Tires to such high-end carmakers as Bentley and Maserati in 2016, before Lamborghini and Ferrari in 2017.

The company added that its meeting with technicians of a super carmaker is already scheduled, not revealing the name.

The seventh largest global tire maker in terms of sales said the year 1999 was a turning point for the then local tire maker to look outside of Korea.

“Starting with five clients including Volkswagen and Ford in 1999, the base of our clients increased to 27 carmakers and 300 auto brands,” said Woo.

The company’s annual output has grown to 36 million units last year, from 6.6 million in 1999, growing at an average 12 percent. Its global production this year is slated to reach 39 million units this year, says the company.

In 2013, by supplying tires for Mercedes-Benz S- class, it has also been providing tires for the top German carmakers. Most recently, it announced it has been supplying tires for sports cars including Audi TT and the Ford Mustang.