2.3 Billion Tyres: Is ENSO the Tesla of the Tyre Industry?| Fully Charged Show Podcast

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Fully Charged Podcast Episode - "2.3 Billion Tyres: Is ENSO the Tesla of the Tyre Industry?"

Host: Robert Llewellyn
Guest: Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (G.), Founder and CEO of ENSO Tires
Release Date: November 25, 2024

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1. Introduction to Tire Pollution (00:11 - 05:27)

Robert Llewellyn opens the episode by highlighting the often-overlooked but critical issue of tire pollution. He reflects on his own limited awareness of the environmental impact of tires until delving deeper into the topic for the podcast. Robert emphasizes the ubiquity of tires and their inevitable wear, leading to significant environmental consequences:

Robert Llewellyn (00:11): "I'm not belittling the cost, but where do the tires come from? And far, far more importantly, where does the stuff that was on the new tires when they were new, now they're worn out. Where's that gone?"

2. Introducing ENSO Tires and Its Mission (05:28 - 07:10)

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson, referred to as G., introduces himself as the founder and CEO of ENSO Tires. He outlines ENSO's mission to develop tires specifically designed for electric vehicles (EVs) that offer greater range, extended lifespan, and full recyclability at the end of their life cycle.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (05:28): "We're making better tires for electric vehicles because of course, we want electric vehicles to be more successful, but we also want to combat tire pollution."

3. The Current Tire Industry Landscape (07:10 - 13:17)

G provides a comprehensive overview of tire composition, distinguishing between natural and synthetic rubber. He explains that synthetic rubber primarily derives from fossil fuels, linking the tire industry's environmental footprint to the broader fossil fuel industry.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (07:10): "Tires are really a composite of many different raw materials that all come together to serve a fundamental function… most tires are made out of a mix of the two [natural and synthetic rubber]."

He also touches on the historical significance of the tire industry, noting its longevity compared to the automotive industry and its complex relationship with car manufacturers.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (09:05): "The tire industry is a recurring industry. You replace your tires regularly, depending on how much you drive and what you drive and how you drive it."

4. Environmental Impact and Recycling Challenges (13:17 - 25:29)

Gunnlaugar delves into the staggering numbers: the tire industry produces approximately 2.3 billion tires annually to equip 1.5 billion vehicles worldwide. This results in about 6 million tons of microscopic tire pollution each year.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (13:17): "Most of our tires, they have no clue where they go. They make 2.3 billion tires on the planet, and they don't have a clue where 99% of them end up."

He criticizes the current recycling methods, which predominantly involve incineration in cement kilns and power stations, contributing to further environmental degradation due to high carbon emissions.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (14:45): "Most tires are incinerated in cement kilns and in power stations as an energy fodder… cement manufacturing accounts for 7% of carbon emissions on the planet."

5. ENSO's Innovative Approach and Circular Economy (25:29 - 34:57)

ENSO Tires positions itself as a catalyst for change within the tire industry by embracing the principles of the circular economy. G explains that ENSO focuses on creating tires that are not only durable and efficient for EVs but also fully recyclable, ensuring that materials are continuously reused.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (19:18): "Enzo means circle in Japanese. We decided that we wanted to be firmly embedded in the principles of the circular economy… making sure that our products have this longevity built in them."

He emphasizes the importance of scaling technology and entering the market with EV-specific tire solutions, leveraging the simpler tire size requirements of popular EV models like the Tesla Model 3.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (23:37): "With a handful of sizes, we can actually enter the market and provide them at scale and grow with the industry."

6. Overcoming Industry Resistance and Scaling Up (34:57 - 47:52)

G discusses the inherent challenges in transforming the tire industry, primarily driven by existing business models that favor high-volume sales over durability and sustainability. ENSO aims to disrupt this model by offering longer-lasting, more sustainable tires that ultimately benefit consumers and the environment.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (16:32): "It's like when we had incandescent light bulbs… ENSO makes a more durable product that lasts longer and reduces its energy consumption."

He outlines ENSO's strategic partnerships, including collaborations with major fleets like Uber, and the company's plans to build a manufacturing facility in the United States to enhance production capacity and remove fossil fuel content from their tires by 2030.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (25:29): "We are scaling on existing technology and providing new iterations on our technology on a continuous basis… we need to build our own tire factory."

7. The Role of Awareness and Regulation (47:52 - 52:19)

G highlights the lack of public awareness and regulatory measures addressing tire pollution. He points out that without consumer awareness, there is little incentive for the industry to adopt more sustainable practices.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (50:08): "There's almost no awareness that there's a problem to be tackled and very little incentive for the industry to do so."

He underscores the necessity of increasing awareness to prompt regulatory changes, comparing the situation to the well-known Dieselgate scandal where enforcement spurred industry-wide changes.

8. Future Outlook and Conclusion (52:19 - End)

In the concluding segments, G articulates ENSO's vision of being a transformative "software upgrade" for electric cars, enhancing their efficiency, range, and sustainability through superior tire technology. He shares optimistic projections about ENSO's expansion into the American market, leveraging lessons learned from the UK to drive large-scale electrification and sustainability.

Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (60:17): "The technology exists to tackle this, but there's almost no awareness that there's a problem to be tackled… innovation already exists and it's our responsibility to make that happen."

Robert commendably wraps up the episode by emphasizing the importance of the discussion and promoting ENSO's upcoming tire releases.

Robert Llewellyn (60:27): "It's a fascinating topic… what you're doing has come about because of electric cars… the tires essentially are exactly the same. And that's an issue that needs addressed."

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Key Takeaways:

• Tire Pollution is Significant: The production and disposal of 2.3 billion tires annually result in substantial environmental pollution, including 6 million tons of micro-particles each year.

• Current Recycling Methods are Harmful: Predominantly involving incineration, current recycling practices contribute to further carbon emissions and environmental degradation.

• ENSO Tires' Mission: To create sustainable, durable, and recyclable tires specifically designed for electric vehicles, embodying the principles of the circular economy.

• Challenge of Industry Transformation: Existing business models prioritize high-volume sales over sustainability, making it difficult for innovative solutions to gain traction without significant scaling and industry-wide collaboration.

• Importance of Awareness and Regulation: Increasing public awareness and implementing regulatory measures are crucial steps toward mitigating tire pollution and encouraging sustainable practices within the industry.

• Future Prospects: ENSO Tires aims to expand globally, leveraging strategic partnerships and upcoming manufacturing capabilities to revolutionize the tire industry and support the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

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Notable Quotes:

• Robert Llewellyn (00:11): "Where does the stuff that was on the new tires when they were new, now they're worn out. Where's that gone?"

• Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (05:28): "We're making better tires for electric vehicles because of course, we want electric vehicles to be more successful, but we also want to combat tire pollution."

• Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (16:32): "ENSO makes a more durable product that lasts longer and reduces its energy consumption."

• Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (50:08): "There's almost no awareness that there's a problem to be tackled and very little incentive for the industry to do so."

• Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson (60:17): "The technology exists to tackle this, but there's almost no awareness that there's a problem to be tackled… innovation already exists and it's our responsibility to make that happen."

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This episode sheds light on the critical yet often neglected issue of tire pollution and introduces ENSO Tires as a pioneering force aiming to transform the tire industry through sustainability and innovation. By focusing on electric vehicles, ENSO seeks to address environmental concerns while enhancing vehicle performance and range, positioning itself as a potential leader comparable to Tesla within the tire sector.

Transcript

[Robert Llewellyn]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the fully charged show podcast Tires. That's what we're talking about in this episode. Really, really important topic. I knew it was kind of important before I did this podcast, but I now think it's much more important. I have learned a lot and I think you will, too. It's a really interesting podcast. Just think about it for a minute because I've never thought about it. Really? Not seriously. Certainly not before I knew anything about electric cars for decades, I'd buy tires and I'd drive cars. And then the tires wear out and you go, oh, God, I've got to get new tires for the mot. It's going to cost a fortune. End of thought process. Total end of. Nothing else. Nothing else. Just the cost, which is incredibly important. I'm not belittling the cost, but where do the tires come from? And far, far more importantly, where does the stuff that was on the new tires when they were new, now they're worn out. Where's that gone? They wear out. End of thought. Wait a minute. When they wear out, that stuff has to go somewhere. It's like the basic laws of physics. It does not vaporize into a heavenly host of angelic forms. It stays somewhere. I don't know where. I have never seen, like piles of old tires, bits of tire. I don't know where it goes. It gets washed away. It just goes away. Well, now we know the massive global impact of billions of tires on billions of miles of road with billions of particulates. It's not a pretty thought. And as we learn more about the world we live in, and this is what happens when you change technologies. You realize that we really do have to change quite a lot of stuff. Maybe not just the power, the stuff that makes our machines work. Maybe it's, we got to look at the machines. We got to look at the way our relationship with those machines works and all those things. It brings up everything. It's really annoying. I've always said this change your petrol car to an electric car is really annoying. Nothing to do with range or cost or hassle or anything. It's to do with the fact that you start to think about the materials world that you live in and where all those materials come from, which is why we're doing a lot of episodes about those topics on the fully charged show podcast where does it all go, these tires that wear out? So you're going to learn a lot about tires. And it's really interesting. I am talking to a man called and I'm going to say his name, Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson, but we can call him G. And I'm very grateful that he allows us to call him G. Everyone calls him G. He's an amazing man. He founded ENSO Tires and you will be hearing a lot more about ENSO tires in the coming years. And the whole idea of ENSO Tires is to develop tires specifically for electric vehicles which allow for greater range, which allow for, you know, a longer life. They last longer than the tires we use now. And critically, importantly, at the end of their life, all the material in them can be recycled. Now, the material that is worn out when you wear out, because ENSO tires will wear any, any tire is going to wear out because its whole function is to create friction with the ground it's traveling on, so you're not sliding all over the road in a completely random way. And so it does wear out, but the bits of these tires are different. And I'm not going to try and explain it. I'm going to let G do that. But please welcome onto the Fully Charged Show Podcast. G. This episode of the Fully Charged podcast is brought to you by OVO's Charge Anywhere. Charge Anywhere helps you power your car wherever you are, plan your route and pay. You'll have access to over 34,000 chargers across the UK's largest charging networks and more than 400,000 charges across Europe. Setup is easy. Just download the OVO Charge app, create your account, add payment details, hit the road and start charging. There's no need to be an OVO customer. Either simply pay as you go or benefit from up to 15% off your charging with monthly boost packages. Ovos Charge Anywhere Power your next journey will with peace of mind. G, thank you very much for joining us today on the show. This is such a. This topic actually came up completely unconnected with today's recording. Someone over the weekend said, well, of course your tires make more pollution than my diesel car. And I said, well, your diesel car has got tires, let's just remember that. And he, he actually hadn't thought that. He hadn't thought, oh, yeah, I've got tires. But it is such a. I think like 10 years ago when I first, or whatever it was 15 years ago when I first drove an electric car, I didn't think about the tires because five years before that, I never thought where petrol came from. You know, it was only when you start to think these things and see changes. And so then when I went, oh, yeah, of course tires wear down, we all know that. But where does that wear down go? You know, it has to go somewhere. It's got, you know, and that's. That realization is a sort of sad reflection on my intelligence, I have to say.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

But don't take it personally. I mean, nobody really was thinking about tire pollution in general until very recently. I mean, for decades, it kind of goes somewhere and then as soon as you pinpoint, does it go there? The industry would go, no, it doesn't go there. But then it ran out of options for saying it, where it ended up.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes. So can you give us a little bit of background of how you got into this, where you're from, what you've done done to lead to this point?

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm, I'm g. I'm the CEO and founder of Enzo, and we make better tires for electric vehicles because of course, we want electric vehicles to be more successful, but we also want to combat tire pollution. So that's really our mission and why me and my co founder set up Enzo some time ago. And ultimately, of course, you know, a lot of the stuff we do is simply talk about the problem that tires cause on the planet. Because if there's no awareness of the impact that tires generate on the planet, it. And what's there to solve? So we see Enzo really as a catalyst for the change to happen. But at the same time, we dedicate ourselves for electric vehicles because that's where we see the need is both in terms of efficiency and durability and sustainability in general. We shouldn't be dreaming of the future where we only have electric cars on our streets, but we still have to pump oil out of the ground to make the tires for them.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah, because that's. I mean, that was one of my really first questions, which is from the, you know, really basic level is what are regular tires from? So what's a tire made by company X that we've all heard of, I won't mention any name. I have no idea what is that tire is made of.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So a tire. People often say rubber.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And that's not really correct because tires are really a composite. They're a composite of many different raw materials that all come together to serve a fundamental function, which is deliver the rolling of the vehicle, deliver the safety and the braking and the turning. Now, tires, you have these kind of large categories of raw materials, and if I kind of summarize, that is the polymers, the fillers and everything else. So polymers, that's natural rubber and synthetic rubber. Most tires are made out of a mix of the two and synthetic rubber mostly comes from fossil fuels, almost entirely from fossil fuels. So it's kind of like what's left over after you've refined oil products to provide you the gasoline, the diesel, the jet fuel, the paraffin, and everything else. You kind of end up with a lot of other heavier gunk. And a lot of that goes into actually making tires.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And synthetic rubber has been around, you know, for just under 100 years. We had, of course, natural rubber before that. And, you know, it's funny to look back at the history of cars and electric cars in general, because, you know, when. When the first EVs came out in the 1818, 1880s and the 1890s, you know, you. You would buy the car and. And allegedly a quarter of the cost of the car was just the tires, because natural rubber was so damn expensive back then.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, my God. That is. I didn't know that. That is extraordinary. So they were. You really didn't want to wear your tires out? They were really.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

No, no. You know, and it was. And it was like this large investment. You did, not just buying the vehicle and the motor and batteries, but the tires. And they wouldn't last very long. They lasted something like 500 miles.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Wow.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you. So mobility at the time was really the purview of the wealthiest people on the planet.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And, you know, often. Sometimes with a man with a green flag in front of them, you know, warning people that someone coming down the street.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you had a situation, of course, back in the day that, you know, we had tires before we had cars. We had tires on bicycles.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And other meaningful. So that, you know, to some extent, the tire industry is strangely much older than the car industry. And this is also why it kind of lives in an ecosystem of its own when it comes to cars. Because if you look at it from a wider sense, you know, it's really, today the only other branded item on a car you can buy a car. But the brand of tires is going to be a distinctly different brand than the car brand. You're going to buy a Kia with some other tire brand or whatever.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. You don't buy Kia tires, basically. Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

No, you don't buy Kia tires. And ultimately, you know, the tire industry is a recurring industry. You replace your tires regularly, depending on how much you drive and what you drive and how you drive it. So as a result of that, the tire industry is often kind of like this cousin that the automotive industry likes to kind of say, no, we do everything but the tires. Like BYD today, for Example does seem everything with the car except the tire. And Tesla does everything but the tires and the windows. So effectively now you're in a situation where, you know, these large EV companies, this is kind of like they still. They won't touch this product because this is still the purview of a different kind of expertise. But you have to, you know, look at it in the historical sense and in some respect, and why did we end up here? But ultimately that's, you know, one of these materials, natural rubber. Then you got filler materials. This is like carbon black silica, and a bunch of other stuff you fill with the rubber. And then you got a really complex chemistry on the other end. But the history of the tire industry is tied to raw materials and a much longer history than the rest of the car industry. Very long answer for a very simple question.

[Robert Llewellyn]

No, absolutely. One of the things I made a note of, because I do remember reading about it, was the demise of the, particularly in the United States of the city tramway system. So I don't know how many cities in America had trams, but most of them, and they were all bought by a company that was owned by Goodyear, who then destroyed all the trams immediately and introduced buses which had tires which needed constantly replacing. So brilliant bit of marketing.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Apparently it was the bus companies and the tire companies jointly decided.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes, okay, I won't blame just Goodyear. Yes.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Other tires, I think. Yeah. But I think that the. Ultimately, of course, the trams are a good example of that. I mean, even a tram wheel does wear down microscopic metal particles. Just like there's air pollution, metal, particle pollution in our underground here in London. So, you know, if it rolls, it wears. Let's be fair about it. And ultimately, you know, there's a lot of science and discussions out there right now. What is generated in terms of air pollution, microplastic pollution, and toxicity. I would just say at this stage is that we just should have a lot less of this stuff in our environment. And that's ultimately where we see ourselves at Enzo, about advancing technology to basically make sure that the best breed of technology hits the marketplace where the highest needs of it is today at an affordable price. Of course, you shouldn't be shutting people.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Out of all proportion either, because hopefully you'll have some grasp of this. But I have no concept of how big the tire industry is and how many tires we use. I mean, it's got to be. I have been to a tire dump when I. For a TV show I made many years ago, and it was in the United States. It was where they, you know, recycled tires. I don't quite know what they were doing with it, but it was, it was like a mountain range of tires. It was un. Of course, you never think of it. What happens to your tires when they wear out? Oh, well, they, you leave them with the tire depot and they go somewhere, you know.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah. Well, if you take a helicopter view, the tire industry makes about 2.3 billion products tires every year now to equip the 1.5 billion vehicles we have on the planet.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So we got 1.5 billion vehicles that are generating tire pollution right now. Yeah, that's every car on the street, basically every truck on the street, every bus. So collectively, the latest calculations from the scientific community indicate that every year we generate somewhere in the region of 6 million tons of microscopic tire pollution.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And that's a lot. That's an enormous amount of pollution that goes somewhere and that's just during their use. At the end of their life they end up in this tire mountains or tire dumps. And what happens to them then is also quite interesting. I won't bore you to tears about what it is, but basically it's the only industry in the world they can call it recycling by burning it. So, you know, you and your. So, so, you know, I love, you know, we need to stop burning stuff. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, but, but, but literally it's an industry whereby recycling means incineration because most tires are incinerated in cement kilns and in power stations as a energy fodder. Coal.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And the calorific quantity of a tire actually is higher than coal. So actually you get more energy out of burning a tire than you would a coal fired power station. So. But at the moment a lot of it is also going to cement kilns because they need a lot of energy to create all that cement. And of course cement is also really bad for the planet because you know, how much something, 7% of carbon emissions on the planet is from cement manufacturing and you know, guess where that carbon is coming from. So it's coming, including from burning the tires. So the problem at the moment is really that the industry itself, and this is the tire industry, not just the manufacturers, but the whole gamut, the distributors, everyone wants to sell more tires. So the way you grow in the tire industry is to sell more volume at higher, higher prices. Now that doesn't favor necessarily the advent of technologies. That means you have to make fewer tires that last longer because you wouldn't sell as many. So we're In a strange situation with the tire industry, which is a bit like when we had incandescent light bulbs in the sense that they would break off and use a lot of energy, we switched to LEDs. Again. They last longer and they use less electricity. Well, that's basically what we at Enzo are doing. We're making a more durable product that lasts longer and reduces its energy consumption. Making, therefore, electric cars go further on a single charge, as well as making their tires last longer, saving on the energy bill and the tire bill. But the fundamental thing is that when you look at the. What we are doing as a counter to the rest of the industry is the sense that the rest of the industry doesn't really want to see change happen. Because, you know, a 5 to 10% reduction in volume every year would bankrupt the tire industry overnight.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Because if they would make fewer tires, they wouldn't make so much profit and their stock prices wouldn't go up, their bonuses wouldn't happen. So you have to understand that how the tire industry is built today has more to do with its impact today, rather than the technology not being available to address the problems. So it's the business model of the industry that drives its impact currently rather than the technology. Technology exists to make tires a lot better, otherwise we wouldn't have good tires and bad tires in the market. Yes, but ultimately, you know, you know, it's not like everyone is doing the same technology today, but ultimately, there's no legislation to combat the problem. And this is when, you know, we at Enzo often say we seem to be an NGO that sells tires because half the time we're talking about the impact, and the other half we're making our customers save money every mile. And the point in that discussion, that the missing part of the discussion is that we're an industry that sees itself at a kind of like a crossroads of how do we they as an industry and us as a tire industry, how do we move forward with embracing new technologies that allow us, of course, to address the environmental impacts of tires? And they're magnifold and they're complex and they're many. But ultimately, we have to take it back to the point of saying, if the industry isn't willing to change, then what do we have to do to make it happen? And this is the. The mission of Enzo in the sense we said, look, let's focus on electric cars. Let's make them more successful. People keep asking us, what about the other cars? Well, say if you want to buy some tires that fit your car, go for It. You can have some. But ultimately we see ourselves. We're not going to survive on this planet if we don't combat climate change. If electric cars are the key to make climate change not an incredibly painful experience for everyone on the planet, then we need EVs to be more successful, more affordable, more scalable at a very short time window. And so for us, the whole business for Enzo is how do we make sure that we can demonstrate that quickly? That's. That's what we're all about.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right? Because that is. I mean, I just want to go back to the burning tires things. I didn't know that. I mean, it's only that, that, you know, the. There was an argument a few years ago that when your electric car done three years old, you'll throw the battery away. And it was. I knew that was wrong then. I know it's even more wrong now. And it would be economically insane to do that. Even if you don't care, you just throw it away. Well, you're throwing away actual money. But surely with a tire, the material that's in that tire, you know, even when it's worn down, there's still a lot of material in that tire that you would think could be used again. But I'm assuming that is.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

It's definitely possible and there are already technologies out there. I mean, when we set up Enzo, we set it up basically to focus on what's so called the circular economy. That means that we want to take harvest the tire back at the end of life, harvest those raw materials out of the tire and make new tires. A tire wants to be a tire as long as possible and become a tire again.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Again.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And so Enzo means circle in Japanese. We decided that we wanted to be firmly embedded in the principles of the circular economy. Material resource efficiency, and of course, making sure that our products have this longevity built in them. And what's interesting is that's possible because we sell tires directly to customers, because when you give them another tire, you can take the old tire back and recycle it. The problem with the rest of the tire industry is that most of the tires, they have no clue where they go. They make 2.3 billion tires on the planet, and they don't have a clue where 99% of them end up.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So if you are a big tire company and you want to harvest your products, you have to go into that tire mountain there and start picking out yours.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And it's. And it's. And it's kind of like this, you know, this mentality and it's not the fault necessarily. The tire manufacturers, they're responding to the distribution and the distributors are kind of responding to the market demand and stuff. So there's, there's a lot of. You can't find fault or blame with any individual in this ecosystem. But when you look at it from the helicopter view and you say to yourself, how do I want to change this? Well, you have to know where your products end up so you can go and get them again. And that's where we see a strong role for Enzo in the future. Because they are valuable raw materials, they can be harvested. And ultimately, again, it's whether they're bio based, renewable, recycled, or based on fossil fuels, whatever the raw materials are, we should be using less of them because everything we do has a carbon implication. So for me, the shorthand of that is that it's just good practice to adopt these technologies. The problem is for the big majors, these are hard to tackle problems because they require them to revisit their whole distribution.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. And I mean, the scale up of. Even if they could, you know, a large, well known tire company, even if they could source their own tires at end of life on a car, it's not a few thousand or even a few hundred thousand, it's hundreds of millions of them. So the scale of recycling, that is just mind boggling.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Well, the largest tire company in the world makes something like a quarter of a million tires.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. A billion, sorry, billionaires.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

250 million tires, you know, out of, out of like dozens and dozens and dozens of different factories in different places for every kind of car that's ever riding on the planet.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So the complexity level is super high. What, what EVs give us, on the other hand, is a moment in time to reassess and reevaluate this industry. Because as you know, most EVs come with like a handful of sizes. You know, there was a chart that was once given on a Mercedes E Class, and this is in the 90s. And you could buy a Mercedes E class with 34 different tire sizes. 34. And that was because everyone in the dealer would want to sell you an upgrade or this special edition or, you know, the XEL plus, whatever, whatever was the additional thing they would use for marketing and purposes. But 34 different sizes on the same bloody car.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Wow.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Now a Tesla today, like the Tesla 3, most of them run on one tire size.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

On the planet, this is the most common car on the planet. It mostly runs on a single tire size. So suddenly you've Got simplicity and much fewer SKUs or, you know, different models within a vehicle, different tire sizes. And that brings a vast simplification in this industry because suddenly you think, hang on, I don't have to make thousands and thousands and thousands of different sizes. I can just make a handful of sizes and target them really well.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And get enough exposure, which again gives you that critical mass that you need to make the change happen. That's how we see Enzo's role in why we target EVs is because with a handful of sizes, we can actually enter the market and provide them at scale and grow with the industry. Of course.

[Robert Llewellyn]

So can you explain, is there a very big difference in the material content of an ENSO tire to a brand X?

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yes. So if you're making hundreds of millions of tires, or even millions of millions of tires the old way, you kind of want to sell them in bulk. And so there are two things. You don't want them last too long and you don't want to spend much more to make them because you have this long distribution chain and you want to sell it. There are multiple players and everyone has to get their piece of the profit in the end. And it's more about churn. So when we design a product, we focus very much on the material science. We're basically a material science company in the tire industry.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So we use higher grade raw materials, very special chemistry besides the engineering of the tire for EV performance. But within the material science, we're all about replacing fossil fuel content with bio based, renewable and recycled feedstocks.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And many of those are also performance enhancing. So some of the materials, and by the way, we still use a quantity of fossil fuels in all of our tires. We're not able to completely make them bio based or renewable yet, but that's our target. By 2030, we've set our target to remove all fossil fuel content from our tires in six years. And that's doable today on existing technology, but we're just not there yet. Because for that to happen, we need to build our own tire factory. Sorry about that.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes factor.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So for us, the technology is there to switch to a non fossil fuel content in tires while making them more energy efficient and more durable to make EVs dry further and pollute less. But ultimately, the way that we want to introduce our products into the market today is all about scale. So we are scaling on existing technology and providing new iterations on our technology on a continuous basis. Once we have our own manufacturing, where we've announced that we're building a tire factory in the United States which will produce tires for electric cars at scale. At that stage we are able then to remove the last pieces of the fossil fuel quantity out of the tire. But ultimately the way you address this market is that most of it will say, well, we can only really paint with the old paintbrushes we were given in the past and the same set of colors we were given as children. And the problem within the industry and why we are different is a bit the same as most legacy industries. This is not unique for the tyrants. Look at electric cars. Why do we have electric cars today? Well, it's because there was a couple of companies out there, Tesla in particular, but we shouldn't forget Renault, Nissan as well and a few others who set the tone and said, look, it is possible. It might be challenging, but it is possible. And you look back and you know, in 2012 we had the first proper Teslas on the streets driving and available for sale. It's only 12 years ago.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And yet you look now at the car industry and there's no future for the fossil fuel engine anymore. Whatever they tell you, there's no future for it.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So within 12 years a handful of companies changed completely the industry. I think that the similar thing has to happen in the tire industry. I think we have to follow the curve and follow the direction of travel, meaning that the innovation exists. And therefore it's not a question of technology, it's a question of how do we enter into a business model and a business relationship with these EVs that enhances them on a continuous basis while the rest of the tire industry. I would say that the mainstream tire industry has the classic legacy hurdles that all major manufacturers of any major industry have is that older factories, older distribution models, I wouldn't say inability, but reluctance to change. But then when you wrap that with being a listed company on a stock exchange whereby your quarterly results and quarterly sales are the go, no go decision, whether the entire executive suite gets a bonus, do you think that they are going to take any risks? The innovators dilemma that sits within most listed companies is the fact that you only get blamed if it goes wrong. And you know, and you don't get any upside or limited upside.

[Robert Llewellyn]

If it goes well, it goes well. Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And, and so, you know, and this isn't just unique with the tire industry, it's unique with your car makers. It's unique. It's not unique with car makers either. It's unique with. It's common with every major industry. On the planet is that once the innovation exists, something will happen to capitalize that innovation. And within our industry, we can clearly define that that innovation exists. Today, we're putting it into our products. Today we're selling tires to electric taxis in London at a lower price than any of our competitors, at a higher performance than anyone else. We are selling tires onto electric vans, onto some of the largest delivery fleets in the uk and it's clear to us that our price positioning is lower and our quality is higher than the competitor. And ultimately these are proof points for us. These are how we enter the market, Focusing on those electric cars that drive the most and therefore would wear out the tires the fastest because they drive so much. But ultimately it's these high mileage use cases that we want to target, which are all becoming electrified because it's clearly much cheaper to drive an electric car a lot. If you need a car that drives a lot, you need it to be electric today. Hands down.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Without incentives. That's just how it is.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So everyone who's a big fleet has realized that we simply serve them to be more successful.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right, right. Because that, I mean, that is the. You know, you're right. It's actually as it is as much about the business model as the, as the materials in the tire, effectively. Because if you are making a tire that literally lasts longer than a competitor's tire, that means your turnover is reduced in a sense, isn't it? I mean, by that, by that metric. But, but one of the ones I was interested in is. Is, have you noticed, you know, potential competitors? I imagine you don't necessarily see them like that, but other tire manufacturers going, oh, we should have a look at what ENSO are doing, because it's a bit of a. Bit of a challenge. You know, do we need to come up with a kind of, you know, try our EV tire? It's really good. I don't know if other manufacturers are doing that.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Okay. Out of the top 10 tire companies in the world, we've probably talked to more than half of them. Let's just be honest about that. They're always curious. And we've come from within the industry, so we know them already.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And we like to work with the industry. We're not trying to get us versus them. It's kind of us and we. And so if we can work with them to scale technology, that's great. Because ultimately we see it's. We want every tire to be lasting longer. I mean, we're not going to combat air pollution in Cities, microplastic pollution, erosions, toxicity for environment and all that waste, unless we get everyone else on board. And to some extent, I would say that within the industry, there are definitely groups within this industry that have, I would say, responded in recent years quite openly and opportunistically with us on this. From within the industry, we're well known. From within, outside the industry, I would say we're less known because we're not widely in the market yet. But that's changing. I mean, the recent announcement we did with Uber, for example, we have now a strategic partnership with Uber to scale across the UK and the United States that's been powered by our recent nomination by Prince William for the Earthshot Prize. All of that gets us to get this awareness about there's a thing called tire pollution that we need to deal with it and that allows us to showcase our technology that addresses, starts to address the problem. But in a long, in a, in a kind of nutshell, if I may just, you know, just riff a bit, you know, ultimately we see ourselves as like a software upgrade on your electric car. Like every time you get a new tire, it should be better than the one you got before, it should give you more range, it should last even longer and it should be even more sustainable.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So when you look at what is the replacement ratio for some of these vehicles, like some delivery vans are riding 40, 50,000 miles a year. A taxi in London is about 40,000 miles a year. An average car in the UK is 12,000 miles.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Nothing is it.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

An average electric car is 14,000 miles, by the way, interesting statistics there. You've seen this probably as well is that I have. Once people drive electric, they drive, they drive more because every mile, every mile is practically free. It's like, it's like a free bonus. Like it's, it's so cheap for driving more that you have, you know, you're not burdened by the fuel costs. So once that investment is there, you want to drive more. But when you look at these high mileage use cases, they're just driving enormously. So if you imagine that a delivery van has to replace maybe as tires every six months or sometimes even sooner, but let's say six months. Yeah, that's the window where we say at Enzo, it should happen, upgrade. You know, we should be trying to upgrade the tires within that kind of time framework, not over three or four years, not like, oh, there's a new range coming out. You know, it's something, something Sportmaster xy, something, something five. And then Four years later there's a six and a seven. You know, you know, that's, that's the same upgrade timetable that car makers used to have. And it's not really surprising that tire companies replace and build these new brands on the similar cadence because they normally, what they have done in the past is every time they've done an upgrade on technology, it's driven by the OEMs, the carmakers.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So when, let's just say BMW brings out a new car at the same time you have the new version of a tire from a certain car maker for tire maker with a new number at the end.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And so that cadence, but that means that the technology only shifts every three or four years, even though it exists to shift a lot faster. So we're looking at Enzo, how do we update an electric car over much shorter time cycles? Because that's the innovation cycle that we need to make EVs more successful versus the traditional approach of saying let's wait for the new vehicle model.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. I mean it is fascinating because it's completely outside of my, and I'm sure many of our listeners and viewers will agree, you know, it's kind of outside of our assumptions and thoughts about tires. I mean I think most people have very personal. It's my tires on my car and they've worn out and I've got to buy new tires and they're expensive. You know, that's, that's a kind of, which is in a sense very similar to how I was with gasoline and diesel. But you had to buy it and it's really expensive and I never thought of any where it comes from, what happened to it after I'd burnt it? It never crossed my mind in 40 years of driving. And as soon as I got an electric car I went, well where does I know where the electricity comes from now, but where's the petrol come from? I mean, and I have made a documentary about an oil refinery. So I did know had no excuse.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

I mean tires are black. I often say tires are black round and you need them and you can't get away with them. I mean there's just no way, there's no way we could run our economies on this planet without them. It's just, you know, even planes wouldn't fly without tires.

[Robert Llewellyn]

No. Yeah, with railway wheels on tracks, that would be tough.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So it's one of the most back of mind products you can think about on the planet because there's been studies after studies about awareness of people and you know, they would stop people in the streets of all over Europe and ask them, what tire brand do you have on your car? 85% of the people couldn't say no. Or, you know, and so you see. So this is so back of the mind. It's, you know, it becomes front of mind when you have a blowout. It comes front of mind when your MOT fails and you have to get a new set. It comes front of mind when you least expect it. And at that point, it's expensive. And that's why the industry gets away with what it does, because it's a distress purchase. It's complex after you pull the car.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, you're right, it is. I mean, my experience with my. I've got a Tesla Model 3 and I've not thought about tires at all until I got a puncture. So because I had worked out, when I knew I was talking to you.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

How far you got 18 inch or 19 inch tires.

[Robert Llewellyn]

You see, I don't know. I think I've got. I would say they're 18 because I didn't order. Or it's a leased car. So it basically came as it was. I didn't. I was saying.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So 18 inch has more range. 18 inch has more range.

[Robert Llewellyn]

It has more range. Right, okay.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So. Because when you select the 19 on the. On the website, it immediately tells you you've lost like 5% of your range by switching to those sizes. That's why everyone chooses the 18. The 18 is 235, 45R 18. It's never changed since they started making that car. It's the most common tire on an electric car on the planet.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That's right. Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

We're gonna. We're gonna have some available for you early next year. So I'll send you a set.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, brilliant. I'm very excited about that. Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So. So. So, you know. You know. Yeah. Where were we?

[Robert Llewellyn]

I can't remember. Yes. Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. The. But I suppose what I wanted to know is if there is. Because that's what I don't know. Because I never kept a record of it. When I had gasoline cars and diesel cars and a Land Rover, you know, I bought tires every now and then. I can't even remember. But it was never. I never kept a record. Oh, I've done 25,000, 30,000. I had no idea. I now know I've done 33,000 miles. So 53,000 kilometers in on three of the tires on our Tesla because one of them is new, because I had a puncture and what's worse is the puncture was my fault because it was a piece of wire that was on my driveway that I hadn't cleared up and it tore a bloody hole in the tire.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah, it's, it's the thing about tire wear. And this is a, this is why, you know, tire pollution is like a sensitive topic because it's directly related to how you drive.

[Robert Llewellyn]

How exactly it has.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

There's this, I mean, honestly, I could talk for an hour about why, why do, why do tire, why does tire wear happen? So let's, let's take the EV out of the moment.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Out of the conversation. Because I think that makes this a little bit different. It's an added layer, but it's an important thing. Most tire pollution happens in cities, not highways.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

It happens because of stop starts and turns.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So when you have scrubbing of the tire for any of that reason, the tire wears down. When you're on a highway, it has a microscopic wear at the highway speed, but it's mostly relaxed and rolling because it's just rolling at set speed. This is why, for example, in America, tires often have a higher durability in America because the longer kind of drives.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Highway drives. Wow. Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah. This is, this is one of the factors. They also have different road surfaces, which is another factor. So if you bring it down to road surfaces, different road surface will have a different effect. In safety's. For example, they now have asphalt that is specially designed for stopping in front of stoplights, which is a little bit more grippy. And that was great. It increases safety, but guess what? It increases tire wear because it's just more abrasive. And then when you accelerate off it, it's the same thing all over again. When you turn just on the stoplight again. So that has an effect. Weather has a factor. And then, you know, you have other metrics as well. But now when we look at vehicles, let's move it to the vehicle itself. You know, something that is heavier, whether it's an SUV or an EV will simply have more force per square inch on the tire tread versus that abrasion.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So. So in the end, and this is all cars are getting heavier. EVs are heavy, but all cars are getting heavier. We're at the stage where tire pollution is just growing out of the 1.5 billion cars. And trust me, there's nowhere near 1.5 billion EVs on the planet. They're not source of the responsibility, but they're a growing percentage, of course. And as we replace cars we need to think about these things. So we have this issues that. Okay, if you drive in cities and if you drive a heavier car, then you have issues. Now anyone who owns a sports car will tell you that a sports car wears tires really fast. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the home delivery system, you know, the school run vehicle, you know, you know, whatever the old, you know, my parents, we had a Dodge Aspen station wagon at home and that was for the school run, you know.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

My father also had a Mercedes, but that wasn't for the school run. And so basically, you know, these vehicles that we used to have for all those, you know, average normal driving, and then you had sports cars. All vehicles are becoming like sports cars.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So more performance, more sexiness and everything. So we have a problem, you know, with, you know, higher performance vehicles, weight, urban driving, and the fact that you then have electric vehicles show up. And that's, that's the challenge because a lot of people want to kind of, as you said earlier, a lot of people want to kind of find a reason to hate EVs.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And tire pollution is one of those things that people can point to. But it's not necessarily only the EV that's the fault. It's, you know, we, we live as an urban society in urban cities. Most of the people on the planet live in urban cities. Yeah, most EVs are driven by that nature in urban cities. But because of the range issues or less and less so. But back in the day, at least, people were afraid. So EVs concentrate in urban areas. When you concentrate them in urban areas, you concentrate in the areas where tire pollution happens. When you then have them really fun to drive and they wear that sport car angle, they wear our tires for that reason. It's how we drive them, not necessarily the vehicle itself. And then of course, when you then make them the core delivery system of our urban environment, like with all these taxis and delivery vans, private delivery vans, private hires everyone, and you make them drive four times more than the average car does. It's unavoidable. But people will start saying, what about the tires? But yeah, the problem is with, you know, I don't blame the electric car per se, that tire pollution is a problem. That does, that's, that doesn't make any sense.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

But I do say that we shouldn't end up in a future where we all have electric cars that run on tires made out of fossil fuels that still generate enormous air pollution. And so I think that when the conversation about tire pollution and EVs has to come together. The way that we approach it is we believe the scientists, we say, look, what does the. Well, we believe the scientists and what our customers say. So the science, I would say, is, you know, I would like a scientific comparison between the most popular car in America, the F150, and the most popular EV in America. And say, which one wears tires more? Yeah, like that would be a, that would be a reasonable comparison because, you know, we know they're both very heavy. But ultimately, I think when we look at the science, you know, added weight doesn't have influence. Added urban driving does have an influence. Added driving, like a maniac because it's really fun does have an influence.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Where we do see ourselves coming into that, say, look, we can't change those things. What we can do is make the tire better.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

You know, I don't want to get into a long argument with people saying EVs do this or they don't do that.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

I'm only here to say that the science exists to make tires a lot better and we could deliver today.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And ultimately that's how we tackle the problem. Because I think the tire pollution point with the EVs is a cost problem as well.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And if, if we, because the tires that we buy for EVs tend to be the highest performance ones.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you have to power the car, but also efficiency you have to buy at the moment. If you want to keep the range on your Tesla. What do you do when it comes.

[Robert Llewellyn]

To tires you want, you want the best tires to do that? Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

You go back to Tesla and you spend a fortune buying those tires from Tesla. Because in America, for example, it's the only way you can maintain the range of that electric car because you have no idea what else is out there. So you have an issue, I would say, with cost being a main determinant. So if we make a more efficient, more durable solution, more affordable, that's really the mission of Enzo. Sell it directly to customers, cut out the middlemen, give you a double A rated product at a lower price than any of the competitors, and then deliver the impact through that mechanism. That's where we see ourselves.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. And actually, I mean, I think, I think there is a role for manufacturers in a sense that, I mean, I've driven so many different electric cars and they all, they generally will have three settings. They'll have eco, standard and sport, let's say. And what I want is for them to have one setting that's just called tire, and it's got Nothing to do with anything else. It just. The heating's on, your seat's comfortable, the steering wheels heated. But the. But when you put your foot hard down it goes. Just gently accelerates. You can barely fix it, you know, so that there's. The minimum amount of wear on a tire would be really. I mean, I'm sure technically that it's not the only solution.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah, it's possible. But if, you know, I just want to make sure I can still accelerate if a truck is about to hit me.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That's true. Yeah. You want to be able to flip it off and just floor it and get out of the way. Yes.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Yeah, there has to be. Yeah, I would say that you still could floor it. But it's a good. It's a good point because.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Well, it's just, I think, to raise people's awareness of it because we're all, oh, yeah, you know, absolutely guilty of not thinking about it and not considering until we have to buy a tire.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

You know, there was no health warning when you bought an electric car that said, by the way, this thing weighs more drives like a sports car. And if you drive it in cities like a maniac, you will have an implication on your tires and that awareness piece that the confluence of the weight, the torque, the urban driving and the sport car that we love about EVs all has an implication. You can drive an electric car like a grandmother and barely make any tire pollution.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That's what I do.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

It's possible. And honestly, that's what we recommend. I mean, honestly, I wanted to put the tagline, you know, we sell the slowest tires on the planet. But my branding people said that wasn't the selling point. Yeah, but ultimately, I think that the way that, you know, the way that we approach the market is that, you know, the awareness piece is key because JD Power, for example, in America did this recently, the survey, and they said that, you know, you know, people's perception of tire wear is all over the map.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

I mean, let's be frank about it. People think that tires wear a lot longer than they actually do because they drive them like crazy. But they said that the average assumption of an EV driver in America was 40,000 miles, 4, 0.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And the reality when they measured it was worth 13. Well, that was three times faster than people's idea about it, but. People's idea. But it was so out of whack with what the data actually was. It's, you know, people who owned some of the early Teslas, they had a lot of issues with Tire wear. Because that had nothing to do with the tire. Well, it had something to do with the tire. Had to do with the suspensions.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Of the earlier Teslas that was then fixed. People who drive electric vans, for example, right now in the uk it's a huge difference in tire wear whether the vehicle's front or rear wheel driven.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Huge.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So can imagine that if you have a front wheel driven heavy electric van that has to do all the turns, stop and start. And also the propulsion, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's gonna wear a lot faster than on the rears that do nothing but roll.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And then when you flip it around, you put the propulsion on the back of the car. The numbers literally flip around. But not as dramatically though.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you have, you have all these things and nobody really thinks about it because there's no incentive of the tire industry, to be frank about it, to try to address these problems.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Because if I give you a way how to reduce your tires from wearing down by driving more carefully, consider, you know, acceleration and sharp turns and etc. You know, I sell fewer tires.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you don't see public awareness videos being made by the big tire companies to say this is how you reduce this problem. I mean, there is almost no talk about tire pollution from the tire industry because they're too busy trying to avoid, you know, litigation.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Having filled our air with, you know, toxic microplastic particles.

[Robert Llewellyn]

But then if you think about one of the most, one of the most popular like video things, and I'm going to mention Top Gear because they did it. But you know, the amount of footage of cars drifting of cars going sideways on, on old airfields where what are you doing to the tires there you're, you will be wearing down a brand new set of tires in 25 minutes and they're ruined. You know, it's. And no one ever mentions that they go, look at, it's drifting. Oh, I'm so skilled. I mean that the smoke and the smell when you do that is mind boggling. I've been.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

It's just an air pollution hazard. I mean, that's an air pollution hazard. So. So. And everyone's loving it. I mean people used to also love the smell of jet fuel in the morning. But you know, honestly.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

You know, I think it's, yeah. It's the thing with tire. Just want to leave you with this thought. Is that the technology exists to tackle this, but there's almost no awareness that There's a problem to be tackled and very little incentive for the industry to do so. And one of the reasons for that is that, you know, tiregate hasn't happened ever.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Because there's no law being broken like dieselgate. We had fuel emission standards and they were breaking these laws. But you can make a fairly crappy tire that wears out really quickly and pollutes the environment enormously and not get penalized.

[Robert Llewellyn]

No one does anything. Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And, you know, and this is the problem with the industry that, you know, Chris Whitie was recently in parliament talking about air pollution and talked specifically about tires as being one of these massive unregulated areas that.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Why are we allowing, you know, low quality production particularly to be sold where it generates substantially more pollution than the good tires that are out in the market already today?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So there's a. I would say there's a lack of regulation to start to tackle the problem. But you don't get regulation until you have awareness and there is no awareness.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, well, in a sense, you know, you're doing that because in fact it was entirely your brand. And the stuff you were talking about that made me, you know, when you first started, made me actually go, oh, yeah, I know. They've got a point, the tires. Yes. I mean, I'd never, you know, I'm definitely a guilty member of the public that never thought about it before. And I think what we've been discussing today, everyone who hears this is going to get in their car or on their bicycle and go, oh yeah, the tires. Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

You don't have to panic.

[Robert Llewellyn]

No, it's not.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Let's be clear, is that, you know, you know, we always say, you know, keep calm and keep breathing. And, you know, the technology exists to start to tackle this, but ultimately I would say the awareness piece is key. There's no regulation to discuss. And that really kind of comes to the final point. What is going to change this industry is the fact that on one hand, tires for electric cars, when they are made and sold, are more profitable than iPhones.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Wow. And Apple make quite a lot of money out of selling iPhones.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

I say to this every time I meet Tim Cook, which I have never done, by the way, but every time I meet him, I say to him, you should be making tires because they're more profitable than the other stuff that you currently sell. In an industry that's this profitable at the moment. And this is for electric cars, not all tires, but for particularly these high performance tires that are sold to electric cars, there's a lot of profit to be made. That means two things. There's opportunity to invest more in raw materials and better technologies, and there's an opportunity to charge customers less. So that, for us, is our mission at Enzo, in the sense that because there's an opportunity and the innovation exists, there are ways for us to get that across. So, you know, we started with taxis, we're on vans. We're about to have the Tesla tires available in the field. You're the first person to know about that, by the way.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Very good. No, I'm very excited.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So you can keep that as an exclusive. And you could be my first customer in the uk. And, you know, we've been powered by, of course, recently by Uber and all the other work that we've been doing lately. And a lot of this has been kind of under the radar and because, you know, who thinks about their tires? But ultimately, the way that we're going to tackle this is really by scaling for us to, you know, it's nice to have electric cars, but you and I agree that we need them everywhere. Yeah, yeah. And it's the edge cases where you have. There are many instances now where an electric car just wins over performance, cost, everything. Yeah, it's those edge cases that we have to really start focusing on. Like those. Those areas where, you know, electric car may not have quite the range or maybe a little bit too expensive. That's where we come in.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

We say, look, we can extend the range so you can have more range. We've shown that already in large scale rollouts. And we can reduce your cost because if you spend less on electricity per mile, your affordability, suddenly it comes into scope, and that's what we have to do. I mean, Enzo's operating on the edge cases of the electric vehicle age, in the sense that we want to propel not just the vehicles themselves that are already commercially successful. We want to push these edge cases out by reducing their cost, reducing their impact, and ultimately extend the range of these vehicles. And that's critical when you consider, for example, in America, there's no tire label at the moment on tires. So we in Europe, we buy tires. There's a label like on our fridge that says it's a rated inefficiency. In America that doesn't exist. So when you buy a tire in the United States, it's like going to the lottery and hoping that you don't lose. You don't know how much range you're going to be losing on your car, but you're going to be losing some of it. Unless you go back to the OE tire and then you can kind of guarantee you keep the range you currently have. But when you are buying electric and operating large electric fleets in America and you just buy tires in the marketplace, the fleets come to us and say, look, we lost all this range.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

It's obvious where you lost it from. It's tire. You just bought something that is akin to buying a pair of cinder blocks and driving on them.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So these are the discussions that we are having with some of the larger electric vehicle fleets, particularly on the US side is moving their awareness piece. So you often think that maybe in Europe we don't have enough awareness about impact of tires. We go across the Atlantic there is absolutely. Yeah. But that itself is an opportunity in the sense that you've got a huge market that requires much better products. And this is why we've been so supported by the US government and other agencies in the US to come to America because. And the fleets, because ultimately, you know, the Delta and the improvements we could deliver there are monumental. And if we can make America successful in electrification, particularly commercial vehicle electrification, because we in the uk, we have all these brands, you know, I'm here despite, you know, Big Ben and Thames River. I step onto Westminster Bridge Road, I see every electric car on the planet drive by and you know, vans, taxis, Ubers, Teslas, everything else in between. And of course now increasingly the Chinese manufacturers which are building great cars.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So when you go to America, it's completely different. You know, it's a much closed, fewer makes, fewer models.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Very little on commercial electrification as of yet. But if you imagine what will happen is that we in the UK have had all this experience for the last seven, eight years, I would say on these large scale rollout of multiple classes of vehicles, that's not going to happen in scale in America. So our job, yours, mine is to take all the lessons and all, everything we've learned so far and bring it there. Because ultimately if we can make America love electric cars more than they love anything else.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

Then the rest of the world will follow. It'll just be like Domino's.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Gee, it's amazing talking to you. We're going to have to do this again. We're going to have to discuss any time. Well, when, when I get my, when I get to buy my tires. I'm really looking forward to that next year. But it's, it's a fascinating topic that we have. I defend us by saying, we've mentioned it on the show, but we really never gone into any detail like we have today with you, and that's been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. It's really good. So all the links to what you're working on, we'll put it in the show notes for this episode so people can find out more. But, I mean, it is a fascinating journey you're on and absolutely, you know, all the luck you can possibly have. I wish you well with it. It's such a. I mean, it's very, very important topic and I think it's. I. What the last thing I wanted to say is, I think it's come about. What you're doing has come about because of electric cars. In a sense, that's what's opened that door. And you go, oh, hang on a minute. Because they still run on tires. You could argue that many aspects of an electric car are really different. The relationship you have with it, how you charge it, where the fuel is, all those things are very different. But the tires essentially are exactly the same. And that's an issue that needs addressed.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And technology already exists to make those electric cars better, more range, reduce the tire wear, switch to more sustainable materials. But ultimately the innovation already exists and it's our responsibility to make that happen. I mean, as well as the wider carbon agenda. Everything we do, even breathing, generates carbon emissions.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

So. So. So it's fundamental that we have to start to tackle that. And. Yeah, and, you know, we love you guys, so thank you so much for this opportunity. Really looking forward to showing the Tesla tires when they become available.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Gunnlaugar Ehrlicsson]

And we'll take it from there.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Brilliant stuff. Thank you so much, Dee. I really hope you enjoyed that. I thought it was fascinating. What an amazing conversation. What an amazing prospect to actually have tyres that are very, very specifically made for electric. Because I know there's some tires that are marketed for electric vehicles, but electric vehicle obviously can use any tyre and I've heard lots of people say, oh, I've got to have special tyres from electric. I know you don't. You can use any old tyres. It's just. Just how good they are and how. How they allow for, you know, more efficiency. That's a. That's a debate to have there, that's all. Please tell your mates to tune into the old Fully Charged show podcast. Been going a long time now. Got really. We are doing extremely well. Is. The audience is always growing, which is very encouraging. Do check out our web page, which is at fully charged.show, because we're doing lots of events around the world, particularly next year. Year. And please subscribe if you haven't already. And other than that, I'll completely shut up now. But as always, if you have been, thank you for listening and watching.