Data show that two-thirds of the natural rubber produced in the world each year is used to make tires. The purpose of using natural rubber is to ensure the toughness of the tire in a low temperature environment and prevent the generation of fine cracks. Faced with the shortage of natural rubber, the tire industry has been looking for alternative raw materials as early as several years ago. Dandelion rubber is a good substitute for rubber trees. China's research on dandelion rubber is relatively late, but progress is rapid.

Scientists have proved that the rubber produced by the dandelion varieties they cultivated has the same properties and quality as rubber trees. The rubber produced by dandelion is stronger and more productive.

As the world's major rubber producing areas are in Southeast Asia, rubber prices are also firmly controlled by these countries. The severe epidemic in Southeast Asia this year has seriously affected the rubber plantation industry. Therefore, the tire industry, which is heavily dependent on rubber, urgently needs a substitute for rubber to avoid the impact of rubber supply shortage. Compared with the traditional Brazilian Hevea rubber, dandelion rubber has the advantages of drought resistance, cold resistance, salt-alkali resistance, barren resistance, developed root system, and strong vitality. Its growth cycle is short, only 1-2 years, and it can mature in 6 months under good breeding conditions. It takes up to seven years for the para rubber tree to grow to produce rubber.

It can be seen that dandelion rubber has a huge advantage, and now only the income and the market stand in front of dandelion rubber, but this is not a problem. As the world's understanding of environmental protection and recyclability strengthens, Germany has been committed to studying dandelion tires. Continental has already planned to put dandelion into mass production as a raw material in the next ten years to meet the market's increasing demand for natural rubber materials. In August 2015, Continental tested its first WinterContact TS850 P tire of dandelion rubber to verify the industrialization of the new rubber-dandelion rubber in tire production.

At present, both domestically and internationally are very optimistic about dandelion rubber. The exploration and development of dandelion rubber in domestic Linglong Tire will help protect tropical rainforests and biodiversity, broaden the supply channels of natural rubber, and reduce production costs and carbon emissions. Significantly, maybe in the next few years, tires containing dandelion rubber will begin to be tested on the road. Tires containing dandelion rubber may gradually become the mainstream products of car tires in the future, and their performance is worth looking forward to.