Japan's Silica Shift: How Fuel-Efficient Tyres Went From 30% to 84% of the Market

Japan launched the world's first tyre fuel-efficiency labeling system in January 2010, grading replacement passenger tyres on rolling resistance and wet grip so consumers could choose lower-resistance tyres at the point of sale. The technology behind those gains isn't a mystery: replacing part of a tread compound's carbon black with silica, bonded to the rubber through a silane coupling agent, cuts the low-frequency hysteresis loss that generates rolling resistance, without sacrificing wet grip the way a simple carbon black reduction would. Fifteen years on, the Japan Automobile Tyre Manufacturers Association (JATMA) has published data showing how far that shift has gone: the share of passenger tyres sold in Japan qualifying as fuel-efficient climbed from 29.7% in 2006 to 84.0% in 2024, and the share meeting the stricter AA-or-higher grade rose from 3.8% to 49.6% over the same period.

The Chemistry Behind the Label

Silica's advantage over carbon black as a reinforcing filler comes down to how each interacts with the rubber matrix. Silica particles carry polar surface groups that don't bond naturally with non-polar rubber, so on their own they tend to cluster rather than disperse. That's why silica-filled compounds require a coupling agent, typically a sulfur-containing silane such as TESPT or TESPD, to link the filler to the polymer chain, a mechanism well documented in materials science literature on silica-silane reinforcement. Done correctly, this chemistry lowers hysteresis at the low deformation frequencies relevant to low rolling resistance and EV-specific compounding while preserving the higher-frequency hysteresis that gives a tyre its wet grip, precisely the combination JATMA's grading system was built to measure and reward.

Two Decades of Adoption Data

JATMA's grading system sorts tyres into bands based on their measured rolling resistance coefficient (see table below). The market-wide, sales-weighted average of that coefficient fell from 9.80 N/kN in 2006 to 7.78 N/kN in 2024, a 20.6% reduction, with more than half of that decline, 5.6 percentage points, occurring just since 2020.

Table 1. JATMA Rolling Resistance Grading Bands for Passenger Vehicle Tyres. Source: JATMA.

JATMA translates that coefficient decline into a lifetime CO2 figure using its Tyre LCCO2 Calculation Guidelines, which account for more than 80% of a tyre's lifecycle emissions occurring during the use phase. On that basis, estimated lifetime CO2 emissions per passenger tyre fell from about 233.8 kg in 2006 to 185.6 kg in 2024. Adjusted to 2024 sales volumes, JATMA calculates the cumulative effect of lower rolling resistance since 2006 amounts to 3.682 million tonnes of avoided CO2 emissions in a single year, a figure the association updates on a four-year survey cycle. Tyre makers tracking this shift often build it into a broader net-zero roadmap and Scope 1-3 emissions strategy, since compounding gains compound further when paired with upstream and downstream emissions planning.

Retreading Is the Slower-Moving Half of the Story

Where rolling resistance has improved steadily, Japan's truck and bus tyre retreading rate has moved only modestly, holding near 18% from 2018 through 2022, stepping up to about 20% in 2023, and settling at 19.4% in 2025, according to Japan Retreaders' Association sales data cited by JATMA. Because retreading reuses the tyre casing and replaces only the tread, JATMA estimates it cuts resource use by about 69% and CO2 emissions by about 65% relative to producing an equivalent new tyre. On 2025 volumes, that translated into roughly 48,000 tonnes of resource savings and 220,000 tonnes of avoided CO2 emissions, equivalent to the material and emissions footprint of roughly 870,000 and 1.2 million new tyres, respectively. JATMA notes Japan's retreading rate still trails levels reported in some other major markets, leaving room for further gains under an end-of-life tyre circular design strategy that would compound the reductions already achieved through rolling resistance improvements alone.

A Domestic Standard With Global Participants

JATMA's labeling system is a voluntary industry standard, not a government mandate, yet fifteen tyre brands currently participate, including Japan's own Bridgestone, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Yokohama Rubber, and Toyo Tire, alongside foreign majors selling into the Japanese market: Michelin, Goodyear, Hankook, Kumho, Pirelli, Continental, Nexen, Maxxis, Nokian, and Nankang, plus retailer Autobacs. Because compliance data must be measured and submitted to the Tire Fair Trade Council under a fair competition code, with penalties for false or non-conforming labels, the system functions as a de facto technical benchmark that any tyre maker selling replacement tyres in Japan has to engineer against, regardless of where its silica or compounding technology originates.

What This Means for Raw Material Buyers and Tyre Makers

For silica and silane suppliers, Japan's data set is a rare thing in this industry: a long, consistent, government-adjacent time series showing the market-wide payoff of a specific compounding technology, updated on a predictable four-year cycle. That makes it a useful reference point for demand forecasting, since the remaining gap between today's 84.0% fuel-efficient tyre share and full market coverage, along with the gap between 49.6% AA-or-higher share and full coverage at that tighter standard, both represent a defined, trackable pool of tyres still due for compound upgrades. Buyers evaluating supplier concentration and pricing exposure in this space can turn to raw material sourcing and supplier risk management for a structured framework. For tyre makers, the retreading data point to a lower-cost, faster-payback lever that's been used less aggressively than compound reformulation: closing even part of the gap between Japan's 19.4% truck and bus retreading rate and higher rates achieved elsewhere would add to the emissions and resource savings JATMA has already documented from rolling resistance gains alone.

Behind This Analysis