Pirelli has just announced that the new Ford F-150 pickup truck will sport a new set of Pirelli Scorpion tires. The tires will come as standard and will be available in different variants. This means that the tire manufacturer will also be releasing a new range of Scorpion tires.
According to Pirelli, engineers at the company have worked in collaboration with Ford for the last two and a half years. Both teams took on a diligent homologation process that involved co-designing, industrialization phases, prototyping, and serious indoor testing as well as modeling and simulation for hundreds of hours.
Of importance to the engineers was the development of mold profiles that would help improve rolling resistance and grip in the Ford F-150. This meant designing a tire that matched the truck’s characteristics. In addition, engineers worked on a dedicated tread design that reduces noise by up to 3dB.
Pirelli went on to add that engineers also developed new tread compounds that improve snow performance and wet handling for heavy-duty vehicles. The tire manufacturer had to use advanced engineering and simulation tools to achieve Ford’s specifications in each iteration of development. The collaboration helped increase the speed of development and optimized performance. It also cut the number of physical Pirelli tires that had to be tested.