'The key to tire development is finding the right match for each vehicle'

"There is no such thing as a universally good tire or a universally bad tire. Ultimately, what matters is whether it is the right match for a particular vehicle."

Kim Jong-myung, chief technology officer and executive vice president of Nexen Tire, made that observation in an interview May 29 at the company's central research institute, "The Nexen University," in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, where he outlined what he sees as the core of future tire development competitiveness.

His view is that as electric vehicles demand increasingly complex tire performance and Chinese rivals advance rapidly, competing solely through the conventional cycle of building and retesting prototypes is no longer viable.

"A tire has no meaning on its own — it only matters once it is fitted to a vehicle," Kim said. "A tire that is a perfect match for one model may not suit another at all."

The shift he flagged first was the rise of electric vehicles. Because EVs carry heavy battery packs, they weigh more than internal-combustion vehicles and place greater loads on tires through higher torque. Under equivalent conditions, tire wear can accelerate by roughly 30 percent, Kim said.

"The first challenge for EV tires is how to address wear," he said. "Second is energy efficiency to extend driving range. Third is tire noise, which feels more pronounced in the quieter cabin of an electric vehicle. Fourth is the load index — the tire's ability to bear the weight of a heavy battery pack."

The problem, Kim said, is that these performance targets pull against one another. Improving wear resistance can hurt energy efficiency, while reducing noise requires trade-offs with other driving characteristics. "Most tire performance attributes exist in a trade-off relationship," he said. "Controlling wear while also improving energy efficiency, and reducing noise while maintaining structural strength — that is a technically demanding challenge."

That tension is precisely why Nexen Tire has been stepping up investment in AI and virtual development. "In the past, we would define a spec, build an actual tire, run multiple tests, and if the results were poor, go back and revise — repeating that cycle over and over," Kim said. "Now we can use AI and simulation to run the tire in a virtual environment, validate performance across fuel economy, cornering and other dimensions, and quickly find the optimal spec combination."

Nexen Tire has invested a cumulative roughly 40 billion won ($29 million) in virtual development equipment and related infrastructure since 2012. Last August, the company partnered with British firm Ansible Motion to install a high-dynamic driving simulator at its Magok research institute. The system combines virtual tire and vehicle models to validate handling, stability and ride quality before a physical tire is ever built.

"Virtual development gets us about 80 percent of the way there, and the remaining 20 percent is a domain where human judgment and feel must make the final call," Kim said. "The driving simulator lets engineers sense the compatibility between a vehicle and a tire in an environment that closely mimics actually driving a car."

He described the approach as a "full virtual development process" — validating everything from the design stage through vehicle-matching in a simulated environment, with a human using the simulator to assess sensory quality only at the final stage.

"With Chinese companies' technology advancing rapidly, competing through the conventional approach of building a tire three or four times to find the answer is no longer enough," Kim said. "We believe the competitiveness of future tire technology development lies in virtual development, and we are committing company-wide resources to it."

Kim also expressed clear concern about Chinese competitors. "In the replacement tire market, they have moved beyond the old perception of 'cheap but low quality' to a level where some say they are genuinely usable tires," he said. "The price gap is narrowing as well, making competition extremely fierce."

He does, however, see a remaining technology gap in original-equipment tires — particularly for large-diameter, electric vehicle and premium models. "In OE, especially in the EV and large-inch segment, we still have a competitive edge," Kim said. "Rather than competing from the outset in a red ocean, the strategy should be to earn quality recognition through OE supply and then convert that into replacement market demand."

AI's role is expanding across the development pipeline as well. "Aside from the final stage where a human makes the call, AI is now embedded in almost every step of the virtual development process," Kim said. "Based on existing data, AI can predict within minutes what level of performance a given design will deliver."

Talent development and industry-academia collaboration form another pillar of Nexen Tire's R&D strategy. This semester, Kim is serving as a visiting professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, teaching a course on engineering technology and management that covers AI-based tire design and materials technology. Nexen Tire is also conducting joint research with Hanyang University on multimodal data-based tire performance prediction, and with Yonsei University on an AI-based noise, vibration and harshness prediction tool, broadening its data-driven development framework.

On May 29, students from the SNU Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering enrolled in Kim's course also visited The Nexen University. They toured research facilities including the driving simulator, a semi-anechoic chamber with a real vehicle, and an acoustic analysis laboratory.

Hwang Jin-ung, a senior in the department, said he appreciated the chance to see experimental and research equipment available only at an actual industrial site. "In particular, the way the virtual simulator realistically reproduced an actual driving environment was deeply impressive," he said.

Fellow senior Lee Chae-eun said the building's exterior, shaped to evoke a tire, left a strong impression, and that the comfortable, state-of-the-art facilities and amenities gave the sense of an environment optimized for research and work.

Kim said he plans to deepen collaboration with universities at home and abroad. He recently visited RWTH Aachen University in Germany to discuss potential cooperation on driving simulators and virtual development. "How faithfully the final stage — the feel of actual track driving — can be reproduced is an area where every company is putting in maximum effort," he said. "We will work with external universities and specialist engineering firms to raise the level of technical completeness."