Hankook supplies tires for Skoda electric SUV

Hankook Tire & Technology Co. started supplying tires for Czech carmaker Skoda Auto’s all-electric SUV.

Skoda, which is part of the Volkswagen group, is the Czech Republic’s biggest exporting company.

Hankook began providing the Ventus S1 Evo3 electric vehicle tire in the first half of this year as an original equipment (OE) product for the Enyaq iV SUV.

The world’s seventh-largest tiremaker by sales has provided its OE tire products for 320 vehicles of around 50 foreign carmakers, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche

Although selling OE tires to automakers does not generate much profit for tire producers, having large corporations as customers boost their brand recognition and may eventually result in higher product prices.

Replacement equipment tires are more profitable for tire manufacturers to sell in after-sales markets.

Over 80 percent of Hankook Tire's entire revenue is made outside of its own country. It has eight plants with a combined annual production capacity of about 100 million tires, including two in South Korea, one in Hungary, one in the United States, three in China, and one in Indonesia.