EU tire label database review: Ever wondered what is the best tire out there in terms of label? Only if you can magically download every single tire label out there and make a comparison out of it……. Luckily for us we managed to crawl our way to get an almost prefect EU tire label data base. Let’s see what we can find out form our big chunk of data. Stay tanned till the end of this article to download the database for free !
Table of Contents
Database Statistic
Before we start diving into the fine details, lets have a helicopter view of the data we have collected.
Number of manufactures: 172
- The total number of manufactures really surprised us as we see huge number of brands that we have not heard off. The manufacturer list includes the establish Michelin all the way to Aptany from China which we have not heard before.
Number of products: 2128
- 12 is the total amount of products averagely a single brand carries. Pirelli has the most product on the list with over 1500 products listed on the database. The top 6 premium brands (Pirelli, Continental, Hankook, Michelin, Goodyear & Bridgestone) have more than 1000 products in it.
Number of sizes: 620
- Almost every single tire size found in the ETRO can be found here. Not surprisingly, tire size 205/55R16 is the most popular size as it tops the list with the most products (636 products in this size)
Best label tire
So who has the best tire from a label perspective? After some quick filtering through the columns, the honors goes to Hankook’s 215/65 R17 Ventus Prime 3 K125A.
- Rolling resistance : “A“
- Wet braking: “A“
- Noise: “67“
This was kind of surprising as we would not have imagine a non premium tire manufactuerer to snatch the best tire label award. Kudos for Hankook in making the leap to become a top premium competitor that excels in technical performances.
There also a bunch of tirelines which managed a wet label A & rolling resistance A ranking. They missed out on the best tire award due to their higher exterior noise limits. The table below shows the list of AA tires.
205/55 R16 showdown
Being the most popular size, consumers are usually spoil for choices when it comes to 205/55R16. With over 600 products in this size, we thought we have a detail breakdown of all of them below.
The best EU label tire in 205/55R16 goes to ….. Michelin’s Primacy 4. If you have not checked our piece of Primacy 4, please make sure to check it out.
Product label: Michelin Primacy 4 205/55R16
- Rolling resistance : “A“
- Wet braking: “A“
- Noise: “69“
Interesting to note that the top products in this size are once again dominated by the top 5 premium tire brands. Only Falken was the exemption with the Ziex ZE310 scoring an EU label of A/B/69. Falken is owned by Sumitomo Rubber Industry which is a top 10 tire manufacturer based on revenue.
Tire size analysis
Based from the extracted data, the product’s EU label changes based on the size. It is almost impossible to achieve the same label class for all sizes. Take Primacy 4 as an example:
Product : Michelin Primacy 4
- A/A : 9
- A/B : 28
- B/A : 22
- B/B : 1
- C/A : 12
Apart from having 9 sizes in the range of A/A, Primacy 4’s EU label varies based on the size. Hence it is important to be aware of the of the size effects when judging the product’s performance. The table below shows the detail size by size breakdown of Primacy’s 4 EU label.
EU tire label drawbacks
So from a consumer point of view, the EU label definitely provides the consumers another dimension to look at the tire products. As the advantages of a particular tire can not be seen by the user upfront, the label is an effective way to showcase the differences between products. The fundamental idea was to provide the customer a transparent way to compare the tire products and possibly affecting the consumer’s purchasing decision.
However due to complexity, the label only has 3 main performance criteria (Rolling resistance, Wet braking & Exterior Noise). Quite naturally the target conflict of wet braking vs rolling resistance is somewhat measurable in the labels. Unfortunately other conflicts such as wear, aquaplaning and dry is not included. This sometimes effectively masked the other performances which needs to be look upon in a magazine test.
Summary
Overall, EU label which has been around since 2012 has been proven to provide users a quick way to compare the market. Even though within the same product, the EU labels varies according to tire sizes. It should also be noted that the EU tire labels are not prefect as the miss our some key performances such as wear, aquaplaning and dry.
As promised here is the link to the EU tire label database. Enjoy !