Independent, real-world analysis of tyre wear, particle size and chemical composition.

Tyres are one of the largest sources of particle pollution on our roads

Every turn of a wheel sheds microscopic fragments of rubber, fillers and additives. These particles drift into the air, settle on road surfaces and wash into the environment. Yet despite their scale and impact, tyre emissions have historically been measured far less than tailpipe emissions.

Our Benchmarking Tyre Analysis System (BTAS) closes that gap by providing an independent, scientifically robust picture of tyre wear and chemistry. It brings clarity to a part of vehicle pollution that is often hidden from view.

Think of BTAS as a microscope pointed at the bits of the story that the industry has not been able to see clearly until now.

A comprehensive approach to understanding tyre emissions

Tyre pollution is complicated. It changes with speed, temperature, load, road surface, driving style and tyre design. No single test can capture all of this, which is why BTAS combines multiple techniques to form a complete picture.

BTAS includes:

Wear rate and particle size distribution: Measuring how quickly tyres wear in real-world driving and breaking down the particles into meaningful size categories, from coarse fragments to fine and ultra-fine particles.
Chemical composition analysis: Understanding what tyres are made of, how materials differ across brands and models and which chemicals are released during wear. This forms one of the most detailed tyre chemistry databases available anywhere.
BTAS data products: Including Tyre Insights, our quarterly reporting series and subscription access to the full BTAS database for in-depth research and benchmarking.

Together, these datasets allow researchers, regulators and manufacturers to see the true environmental footprint of tyres.

Four car tires standing upright on an asphalt surface with trees and sunlight in the background.

Wear rate and size distribution

A tire rolling over scattered chemical compound words and formulas, with a focus on benzene and related chemicals, on a white background.

Chemical composition

Why tyre emissions matter

Tyre wear particles can:

Contribute significantly to airborne particulate pollution
Enter waterways and soil as microplastic pollution
Vary in toxicity depending on chemical formulation
Behave differently across driving conditions, weights and vehicle types
Carry compounds of regulatory interest such as 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone

Understanding these behaviours is essential for improving tyre design, informing policy decisions and creating a more accurate environmental picture of modern vehicles.

What BTAS helps you do

- Benchmark tyre designs using independent data
- Compare wear rates against competitors
- Support material innovation and safety improvements
- Build transparency into sustainability reporting
- Understand the scale and nature of tyre pollution
- Inform future standards and regulations
- Access impartial emissions and chemistry data
- Access detailed datasets for scientific studies
- Explore toxicity, particle pathways and long-term environmental impact
- Identify tyres with lower wear profiles
- Improve maintenance planning
- Support sustainability strategies

How we test

BTAS draws on controlled real-world driving, laboratory analysis and harmonised sampling techniques to ensure consistent and comparable results.

Our testing includes:

Standardised on-road routes
Temperature and speed variation
Controlled driving cycles
Mass loss measurement
High-resolution particle analysis
Chemical profiling of tyre compounds

These methods combine to create a dataset that is trusted globally for accuracy and independence.

View presentation

Measurements

The following measurements are available separately for tyre and brake wear:

Integrated mass loss
Real-time particle mass and number concentration, plus size distribution
Background pollution concentrations
Volatile organic compounds off-gassed
Chemical speciation of the original tyre and brake components and wear functional group compound classification.

We can test to these additional standards.

With these measurements, a ‘contamination factor’ is derived using chemical fingerprinting, which estimates the proportion of non-tyre material collected in the tyre sampling rig and the equivalent proportion of non-brake material from the brake sampling rig.

Emissions Analytics independently sources and tests vehicles to support our clients market analysis and R&D. Measurements include fuel efficiency, carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate number (PN) and OBD data.

Over 2,000 European, US and South Korean market vehicles available.

Results are available via a cloud-based database and also via Excel upon request.

More details are available here.