California tire heavyweight Dunlop is taking aim at the state’s broad new green tire mandate, likening it to California’s troubled High-Speed Rail effort and urging officials to show the policy will deliver before imposing it on millions of motorists.
Darren Thomas, president and CEO of Dunlop Tires North America, sharply criticized California’s newly approved efficiency standards for replacement tires in comments to The California Post.
Thomas argued that regulators may be making the same mistake seen with the state’s over-budget bullet train project: chasing environmental ambitions without fully proving how the policy will play out in the real world.
“We’re asking California to prove that the regulation produces a better overall outcome for Californians,” Thomas told the California Post.
“As a state we failed to do that with High-Speed Rail. Another initiative that cost taxpayers billions and promised lower fuel consumption and emissions.”
Thomas suggested the tire regulations, which will gradually block the sale of replacement tires that fall short of California’s energy-efficiency benchmarks, may have been pushed forward too quickly and for the wrong reasons.
“A political position isn’t required to gauge the success of that endeavor. Given the pressure on the California consumer, let’s get this one right and let’s do it for all the right reasons,” he said.
The California Energy Commission’s rules focus on “rolling resistance,” the amount of energy needed to keep a tire moving on the road. Tires with lower rolling resistance can improve fuel economy or electric-vehicle range, and Democrats have argued the standards will help lower costs for drivers while cutting emissions.
But that ban on high-resistance replacement tires, which kicks in 2029, has sparked backlash as critics warn of a surge in prices as the industry scrambles to replace as much as 70% of the tire market.
Average tire prices could increase from $81 to up to $157, according to the Tire Industry Association. For a full set of tires, the difference could exceed $300 per vehicle.
Thomas told The Post that meeting the rolling-resistance requirements is technically feasible. The problem, he added, is that the rules don’t truly consider what happens to the tire’s other aspects, such as traction, weather performance or tread life.
“The issue isn’t the technology,” he said. “It’s the blanket application of one tire-design objective across an extraordinarily diverse replacement market without, in our view, sufficient real-world validation of the complete consequences.”
Dunlop Tires supports energy efficiency and lower emissions, Thomas said, but the current path to that is the wrong one.
“We believe the state should conclusively demonstrate that consumers receive a better overall outcome—not simply a lower rolling-resistance number,” he said.
When asked what the company could do to counter the rules, Thomas told The Post that Dunlop is hoping to get the commission to study the rules further and tweak them accordingly before they go into effect. He, for example, has noted that tire pressure management could achieve energy efficiency rules at no cost.
“Our strongest levers are expertise, evidence, reason and ultimately the voice of the California public,” the CEO said.
Both the tire efficiency requirements and the state’s high-speed rail project were promoted as part of the state’s push to lead the nation in lowering carbon emissions. But the rail project has gone nowhere.
The bullet train is far from complete since workers broke ground in 2015. Only this year did the ill-fated project enter what officials called the “track-laying phase.”
Republicans have criticized the rail line as a fantasy project that’s wasting taxpayer money. Costs for the original plan have ballooned past $200 billion, though the rail authority insists the reassessed project cost is $126.3 billion.
