Bridgestone Enhances Virtual Tire Development Capabilities with Own Driving Simulator Set-Up

Bridgestone, a global leader in premium tyres and sustainable mobility solutions, has today announced an investment in a new driver-in-the-loop (DiL) simulator at its EMEA R&D Centre based near Rome, Italy. Complementing its Virtual Tyre Development (VTD) capabilities, the new state-of-the-art DiL simulator underscores the company’s commitment to fully digitalise the tyre development process. The investment will enable Bridgestone to combine tyre and vehicle simulations with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies – boosting innovation, sustainability and cutting time to market.

Having leveraged VTD for a decade, the introduction of a Bridgestone-owned DiL simulator empowers Bridgestone engineers to virtually reproduce tyre behaviour, vehicle interaction and response in various conditions – combined with subjective input from expert test drivers. With the help of AI technologies, this combination supports faster assessment of many more design options, accelerating progress toward target tyre performance and the virtual experimentation of new and innovative design concepts.

The new DiL simulator will help Bridgestone boost innovation and explore uncharted areas, while increasing speed to market and the efficiency of the development processes. The investment also strengthens the company’s development of premium Original Equipment (OE) and replacement products, and its collaboration with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) partners. This is thanks to these new capabilities enabling tyres and vehicles to be developed in parallel through fast joint iterations.

On-premises DiL simulation will also help accelerate the company’s sustainability journey. By reducing the volume of both manufactured tyres and physical tyre testing, Bridgestone projects that up to 12,000 experimental tyres will be saved every year thanks to this investment, providing a significant consequent reduction in CO₂ emissions. The business’s proprietary VTD technology already leads to a reduction of up to 60 per cent in raw material consumption and CO₂ emissions in the development phase of OE tyres. For replacement tyres, the saving is at least 25 per cent.

‘The level of accuracy and alignment with the track we demand’

Leveraging data-driven predictors and physics-based simulations, Bridgestone VTD capabilities are being applied to all products. This includes both premium and prestige OE developments as well as the company’s next-generation products. The implementation of Bridgestone-owned DiL simulation will significantly scale up these capabilities in what is now a comprehensive ecosystem of digital tools and solutions – empowering innovation, speed and flexibility.

The investment is funding a new state-of-the-art dynamic driving simulator from VI-grade. With this simulator – expected to be fully operative by the end of 2025 – the company projects the DiL approach will be applied to up to 50 per cent of OE developments annually. While the DiL approach is mainly currently used by Bridgestone to assess dry handling, the company is working to expand both the tyre performance areas it can assess and the market segments it can be applied to.

“This investment in our internal DiL simulation capabilities is a major milestone as we build a comprehensive ecosystem for accurately predicting tyre performance in the virtual world. It also gives us the capabilities to experiment with new and innovative combinations of designs and materials in a fully virtual environment,” says Emilio Tiberio, Chief Technology Officer Bridgestone West.

“Bridgestone is a leading investor in R&D in the industry, with more than 800 million Euros invested annually across the globe. This next step is a testimonial to our Bridgestone E8 Commitment. As a sustainable solutions company, we continue to innovate while reducing our time to market. At the same time, we are improving joint development processes with OEMs and enhancing the sustainability of our R&D activities.”

Source: Bridgestone