Continental tries first car tires with Taraxagum Dandelion rubber tread. Performance of the WinterContact TS 850 P will be tested at the company’s own proving grounds the Contidrom, north of Hanover and in Arvidsjaur, Sweden. Continental has pulled together all the information about the milestones of this pioneering research project at http://www.taraxagum.de
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kopYImf ... e=youtu.be
In Sept 2015 the leading international tyre manufacturer Conti had reached an important milestone in its research project for the industrialization of Dandelion rubber in tyre production. In the fall of last year, Continental presented the first test tyres in a limited series made from the innovative material that the company is calling Taraxagum™, derived from the botanical name for Dandelion (taraxacum). Manufacture of the first WinterContact TS 850 P with tread made entirely of natural rubber from dandelion roots has taken Continental an important step closer to reaching its long-term goal of making tyre production more sustainable and less dependent on traditional raw materials.
Intensive development work together with the Fraunhofer Institute has resulted in the first Dandelion tyres onto the road. It was decided to build car winter tyres, as they contain a particularly high proportion of natural rubber. Conti are continuing to pursue the goal of developing tyres based on dandelion rubber to readiness for series production within the next five to ten years. The development process of Taraxagum™ has been very promising so far and Conti are currently continuing the industrialization process together with our partners. As a result of extensive research conducted together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME), the Julius Kühn Institute and the plant breeding company Aeskulap, in the past few years good progress toward cultivating a very high-yield and robust kind of Russian dandelion has already been made.
The long-term goal of the research project is to find an ecologically, economically and socially viable response to the increasing demand for natural rubber. This would ease the pressure on the traditional rubber tree plantations in the tropics. Additionally, the aim is to reduce dependency on natural rubber which can be subject to severe price fluctuations on the commodities exchanges. Moreover, cultivating dandelions on previously unused land in temperate regions of Europe – closer to Continental’s European tyre plants – would sustainably reduce logistics costs and the transport-related burden on the environment. The dandelion-based rubber called Taraxagum™ obtained from the root of the Russian dandelion is being developed by Continental and its partners as an alternative to the traditional cultivation of natural rubber.
http://www.continentaltire.com/content/ ... bber-tread
just goes to show I should have used "Search" or is it Age ! - Dave 
