Continental UltraContact UX7 sampled – new SUV tyre heads brand’s tech experience showcase in Germany

Despite it being an integral element of driving, tyres aren’t generally given much thought, beyond understanding that they’re needed for moving a vehicle about. When they are contemplated or given thought, it’s usually during the purchase experience, with price – and sometimes performance – usually helping to define the selection.

The thing is, tyres aren’t sexy, and unless you’re into vulcanised rubber or an anorak, ‘black donuts’ aren’t exactly a great subject to pore over. Assuming that you do try to, a wall of jargon pitching the technical excellence of the tyre is usually all that you have to base your pick on. That, and a snazzy or aggressive tread pattern to sight, which in most cases seals the deal for many.

There’s obviously much science – and testing – behind every good tyre, but in virtually all cases, you’ll have to take whatever is pitched on faith, finally only knowing how good – or bad – it is after the fact, when it’s on your car and the miles pile on. Unlike cars, you really can’t try before you buy.

Which is why reputable tyre makers put their money where their mouth is by organising tyre evaluation sessions. Of course, it can be argued that subjective testing is empirical, but sometimes, the facts do shine through, and very evidently.

Case in point, the Continental UltraContact UX7, which was introduced in Malaysia in April ahead of a mid-year market debut. Some months back, the German tyre maker (well, it is actually more than that in terms of scope and breadth, but let’s just concentrate on the core it is known for by most) offered the chance to sample the new tyre in Germany as part of a larger insight into the company’s portfolio and workings.

Before we get to that, a recap of the tyre. The UltraContact UX7 is an SUV-dedicated tyre that essentially takes over from the UC6 SUV. Offered in sizes ranging from 15 to 22 inches, the maker says the UX7 has been specifically developed and optimised with the SUV drivers’ needs in mind, meeting their demands for both urban commutes and casual off-road trips.

The focus is on safety, durability and quietness, as indicated by the product pitch. This is led by its X-Force Macroblocks, which maximise the tyre’s contact patch for better handling and stability, while the tyre’s Adaptive Diamond Compound incorporates a special formula with silica that enhances the transformation of kinetic energy into heat at optimum levels, resulting in shorter braking distances on both wet and dry roads, according to the company.

Elsewhere, an Aqua Channel feature also quickly drains water through a unique tube system into the tread grooves, accelerating water evacuation. For those occasions when exploration goes off the beaten path, the UltraContact UX7 is also ready for that, with its Robust360 construction includes a reinforced steel belt that strengthens the tyre to absorb shocks from the road, enhancing shape retention and direction stability.

It also features a sturdier carcass design, which reduces the risk of tyre damage, while polymer chains of Diamond Compound form a rigidly-interlocked network, improving the tyre’s wear performance to avoid cut and chip damage.

According to the tyre maker, this enables enhanced durability and a longer use life to better withstand the heavier weight and load of an SUV throughout various city life conditions, including the occasional off-road excursion. Finally, keeping noise in check is a precision-cut tread design and the adoption of Noisebreaker 3.0 technology, which breaks up sound waves to prevent noise from building up and intruding into the cabin.

A quick bit of trivia, as highlighted during the presentation for it – the UX7 has a tailor-made fit for vehicles, depending on class and weight. Smaller sizes within the range are aimed at providing enhanced driving comfort, while larger sizes going into the UHP segment has the design being adapted for a sportier performance.

As you’d expect, the technology that has been poured into it does make for an advancement over the UC6 SUV in a number of areas. While mileage and wet handling performance remain equal to the older tyre, dry handling and dry braking as well as fuel efficiency have gained a noticeable improvement, and there’s a significant jump from the UC6 SUV in terms of wet braking and noise performance.

Although the primary plug of the invitation was for the tyre, the test session for the UX7 at an ADAC test facility in Hannover didn’t run the whole gamut of usual side-by-side evaluations such as that done for the MaxContact MC7 in Australia last year, because there was quite a bit else to show. Nonetheless, two running tests for it were done, the second highlighting one of its performance improvements very noticeably.

The first, a wet cornering test, involved driving a VW Tiguan on a downhill trajectory section before going into a wet patch into a returning radius corner. Here, the UX7 kept traction and remained poised even with speed inputs going past 60 km/h. There was an absence of a control tyre, which for the second test was the UC6, because the subjective performance here would have been about the same, it was explained.

Despite the relatively short shift, it was actually possible to discern that the UX7 was that bit quieter when rolling back to the start of the wet braking test station. Uniformly, all the mules were Audi Q3s, both for the UX7 and UC6, and in-car measuring equipment logged braking distances from 80 km/h to zero (counting it only from 80 km/h to halt when the brake pedal was stomped, independent of approach speed). Every driver got two runs on both tyres.

With the UC6, the Q3 took 33.46 metres (the average over two runs) to stop with my co-driver behind the wheel, while my average reading was 33.57 metres. On the UX7, the distance dropped significantly – my co-driver managed 26.64 metres, while mine was 26.38 metres, but the average across all the samplings from the drivers in our group were within the same zone.

While seven metres doesn’t sound like much, it really is in the grand scheme of all things braking, especially more so if you look at it from the pedestrian context, where the difference in distance could mean a big scare or a possible fatality. And so, big plus marks here.

It really would have been interesting to explore the other parameters of the UX7 in associated tests, but the need to present things with a larger intent meant that there was all to it with the new tyre. As such, the test set at ADAC shuffles on to another wet handling test, of evasion and control with the WinterContact TS 870 P on the Module X test.

The process is simple enough, with a kick plate pushing the car into a skid upon approach into a wet, low-friction surface section, the driver needing to correct trajectory while avoiding random water jet walls serving as obstacles. While we’re not going to see the WC coming our way, the sampling showed that it does offer good levels of control (dependent on driver skill, of course) tackling such conditions. Also highlighted at the ADAC test centre was the CrossContact AX6 all-terrain tyre.

The real meat, however, was at the Contidrom, the pearl of the company’s tyre division. One of the most technologically advanced test tracks in the world, the place has become the preferred tyre testing facility for brands all over the world since its inception, testing more than 1.3 million tyres over the last 50 years.

Covering a total area of 160 hectares, which is roughly the size of 220 football fields, the proving ground covers every conceivable need around tyre testing and has welcomed many customers in the automotive world. We get two driving tests at the facility and a tour of other happenings here, all aimed at highlighting the company’s extensive and dynamic testing expertise that assures and enhances the safety, performance and quality of every Continental tyre.

The first of the two tyre tests was again a wet handling one, with the MaxContact MC7. This was accomplished on VW GTI examples in lead-follow fashion over a 1.8 km-long track with plenty of mixed radius corners, the test aimed at showcasing the MC7’s aquaplaning resistance and cornering performance on a consistently low-friction and wet terrain. The APAC-dedicated sports tyre did very well, its level of grip and predictability allowing the cars to carry a decent turn of speed across the section over repeated runs.

The other road test involved dry handling with the SportContact SC7. The showcase, made with performance-oriented evaluators such as the BMW M3 and Audi RS3, aimed to highlight how the tyre would perform being driven hard across the section, intended to simulate a common dry, European country road.

The rain made work of it for the first group, but by the time we get to the station, conditions had improved, and we got to belt the cars around on what was a fairly dry track, again in lead-follow fashion. The RS3 I ended up in made short work of everything, and while there’s no denying that the SC7 is a very good tyre, it was the Audi’s ability to respond to inputs cleanly and sharply that impressed – it really is quite a car.

That done, we moved on to the tyre maker’s dynamic driving simulator, which is capable of calculating exact driving dynamics parameters for tyres and the test vehicle. Designed to provide Continental’s professional test drivers with the same subjective driving impressions as tyre tests on the actual test track, the system, based around an Ansible Motion Delta series S3 Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator, is quite the tech marvel.

With five by four metres of lateral and longitudinal travel and the ability to do incredibly rapid roll, pitch and yaw movements, the simulator – which houses a VW Passat B8 interior in the cabin – works with a three metre tall, nine metre wide, 270 degree curved screen running with five 4K projectors and VICarRealTime and IPG Carmaker simulation software to create what really is the ideal gaming console rig.

In it, test drivers run tyre tests as they would in the real world, over a small series of test courses (lidar scanned and digitised Contidrom, the IDIADA and Nurburgring over a 10 km distance). The objective is to shorten the development periods for tyres (by as much as three months) through such testing, with simulators such as this one able to predict the subjective dynamic behaviour of vehicles and tyres with high precision.

Elsewhere, the aspect of comfort was provided through a sampling involving acoustics, as in how noise is measured and addressed in tyre development, both in the lab and, on this occasion, on the road, the latter done with the aid of an array of sound measurement equipment inside test mules.

The tour also took us to the Automated Indoor Braking Analyzer (AIBA), a one-of-a-kind facility at Contidrom that allows the brake performance of tyres fitted to fully automated driverless vehicles to be tested on different road surfaces all year-round, regardless of the weather. Here, up to 100,000 brake tests can be performed annually.

The event also saw a visit to the company’s R&D centre in Stocken, where certain processes were shown. This included its non-destructive testing tyre analysis, in which X-ray, computer tomography and interferometry are used to support tyre development process without destroying the tyres, and its tyre carving department, where existing cured tyres are changed by carving of additional grooves by hand or robot. In all, plenty of science behind it all, despite the subject not being the sexiest to pitch.

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