Continental celebrates its 150th Anniversary

Oct 25, 2021 Continental, 150th Anniversary

Continental celebrates its 150th Anniversary

Continental is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2021. Since its foundation in Hanover, Germany on 8 October 1871, the company has been developing pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. 

From a small factory in Hanover, Continental has developed into one of the global players in the automotive industry, and now operates in 58 countries and markets, and employs around 193 000 people. The Tires business area has 24 production and development locations worldwide, and is one of the leading tyre manufacturers with more than 56 000 employees. “Continental is the oldest independent tyre manufacturer, and also one of the world’s largest,” says Martin Buday, Managing Director of Continental Tyre South Africa. “Over the past 150 years, we have set standards across the tyre industry with our pioneering spirit and innovative strength. Continental has a long and exceptionally proud heritage of delivering ground-breaking inventions that ensured that tyres became safer and more efficient, and this also defines our approach towards a more sustainable and even more exciting future.”

In its early days, Continental’s product range included a variety of rubber products such as toy balls, rubber mats, roller coverings, rubberised fabrics for balloons and solid tyres for carriages and bicycles. Continental was the first German company to produce pneumatic bicycle tyres in the late 1800s, and in 1898, the production of pneumatic tyres for cars began. The first pneumatics were treadless and had comparatively limited handling characteristics, at least by today’s standards – and so Continental presented the world’s first car tyre with a tread in 1904.

Some of the other significant milestones in Continental’s tyre development include the 

first tyre with a detachable rim, the patent for the world’s first tubeless tyre and, with the “all-terrain” model, the first dedicated winter tyre. Likewise, the first pneumatic tractor tyre came from Continental. Later came the first rolling resistance-optimized tyre, and the first production tyre to feature a tread made from dandelion rubber.

Before a new tyre from Continental is launched on the market, it has to successfully pass a wide range of tests. In total, new tyre models cover 25 million test kilometres before the start of production. The enormous effort is justified, because it is the foundation for the quality of Continental tyres for all applications, under even the most extreme conditions. An example of this is the ContiSportContact Vmax, which was launched in 2003 as the only production tyre on the market with a maximum speed rating of 360 km/h. For the testing of tyres in all conceivable conditions, Continental maintains state-of-the-art tyre testing facilities worldwide. The Contidrom, near Hanover, was the prototype when it opened in 1967, and has become the reference for all Continental tyre test centres around the world.

As early as 1968 the first electronically-controlled driverless car took to the track at the 

Contidrom. Continental has further developed this technology and now uses it at the test site in Uvalde in Texas, to subject tyres to endurance tests. In 2012 Continental launched the Automated Indoor Braking Analyser (AIBA) at the Contidrom. This facility, which is the only one of its kind in the world, enables the brake performance of tyres on different road surfaces to be tested all year round, regardless of the weather. It is done fully automatically using unmanned vehicles.

In the future tyres will also be tested at Contidrom in a new type of dynamic driving simulator. Thus, professional test drivers will also be carrying out realistic driving scenarios virtually. Having each test cycle completed in the driving simulator instead of on real roadways means fewer test tyres need to be produced. This investment in the new testing technology also contributes to Continental’s extensive sustainability efforts.

Sustainability and Vision 2030

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