Bridgestone, the Japan-based tyre and rubber company, has launched its first tyre fully dedicated to the coach segment called the ‘COACH-AP 001’. The company claims that the tyre comes with excellent labelling across rolling resistance and pass-by noise, as well as high performance in wet and wintery conditions. It further claims that it is a cost-efficient option for coach fleet managers that also maximises comfort with no compromise on safety.

Meeting fleet operators’ challenges
Minimising operational costs while ensuring the highest level of safety is one of the biggest focus for coach fleets due to the huge demand on the people transportation industry. Combine this with increasingly stricter European regulations in terms of CO2 emissions and noise, and ever-present demands for improved road safety, result in challenging times for fleet operations. Bridgestone claims that the new Coach-AP 001 can tackle all these challenges with its advanced tyre technology.

Bridgestone’s new generation of coach tyres, the COACH-AP 001 applies a newly developed low rolling resistance pattern that results in an excellent EU label B grade in fuel efficiency to help reduce CO2 emissions and total cost of ownership for fleet operations.

Bridgestone Coach-AP 001

Like with CO2 emissions, EU institutions are placing pressure on the automotive industry to reduce the noise produced by vehicles, following a regulation introduced in 2014. But, for coach fleets specifically, noise reduction is an even greater priority as it improves the comfort of passengers. The Coach-AP 001 is said to be engineered with noise reduction in mind, achieving an excellent pass-by noise score of just 69 decibels.

The Coach-AP 001 tyre is claimed to be designed to deliver outstanding performance in all types of weather. The tyre has been awarded an EU label B grade in wet grip and achieves 3PMSF and M+S markings to be fully winter ready.

“Fleets today face greater challenges than ever before. But within that market, the people transportation segment also faces its own hurdles,” said Steven De Bock, director sales and operations commercial products at Bridgestone EMEA. “In the Coach-AP 001, we have developed a tyre that reduces the total cost of ownership for fleets and maximises comfort with no compromise on safety to help our fleet customers answer the challenges they face.”

As with all truck and bus tyres available within Bridgestone’s 2019 portfolio, all Coach-AP 001 tyres will be made traceable with electronic tagging system RFID (radio-frequency identification). As Bridgestone’s digital mobility solution portfolio for fleets – now including Total Tyre Care, FleetPulse, and, following Bridgestone’s acquisition of TomTom Telematics, Webfleet – continues to evolve, the implementation of RFID could bring added value to customers looking to benefit their tyres with connectivity and predictive maintenance.

Bridgestone Coach-AP 001 – master size 295/80R22.5 – will be launched in October 2019. All Coach-AP 001 tyres, developed at the Bridgestone’s European R&D centre in partnership with our fleet customers, are manufactured in Europe.