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Continental PremiumContact 7 now available

Continental has launched the seventh generation of its successful and flagship PremiumContact summer tyre.

Continental says with the PremiumContact 7, it has improved the passenger car tyre in all safety-relevant areas compared to its predecessor PremiumContact 6.

Like the SportContact 7, the PremiumContact 7 is tailor-made for a wide range of vehicle concepts – according to weight, size and drive system.

Since heavy vehicles require different tyre solutions than light passenger cars, the specifications of the PremiumContact 7 have been adapted to each vehicle class, according to Continental.

With the rise of electric vehicles with particularly long ranges and high performance, the safety factor is ever gaining importance in this segment. In addition to improvements in rolling resistance and mileage, Continental says the PremiumContact 7 provides high grip and low braking distances for vehicles of all drive types, thanks to its customised designs.

Another new feature of the PremiumContact 7 is the innovative RedChili compound: The rubber compound for tyres is usually made up of natural rubber and synthetic components. Because each element requires a specific temperature to achieve optimum performance, the grip of the tyre can also be influenced via a targeted selection and composition of the materials.

With the new compound for the PremiumContact 7, Continental claims it has succeeded in enabling optimum performance across the broadest possible temperature range. This allows the tyre to develop high grip even at low temperatures in daily traffic – without any prior warm-up phase.

Customers particularly benefit from this during the transitional spring and autumn months, Continental says.

The adaptive tread design of the PremiumContact 7 ensures even greater stability and ride comfort on both wet and dry roads: Wide lateral openings in the outer areas of the tread pattern provide optimum drainage when driving straight ahead because the ground contact surface ends precisely at the point with the widest opening.

During cornering, the ground contact surface shifts outward and the lateral openings close again, providing more rubber and better grip on the road.

The new technologies have been tested both virtually in tread and tyre simulations as well as in the lab, and on test tracks in southern France, Germany, Czech Republic and the US.

The mileage of the PremiumContact 7 alone was tested over a distance of 150,000 kilometres and permanently optimised. The developers were thus able to increase this value by 10 per cent compared to the predecessor model.

Wet handling has been improved by five per cent, wet braking by as much as seven per cent, and aquaplaning by two per cent.

The PremiumContact 7 now achieves an “A” wet grip class rating on the EU tyre label. Dry handling and braking were both improved by three percentage points, Continental adds.

The PremiumContact 7 is now available in selected sizes. Continental says these sizes will be expanded over the course of the year, so that many popular tyre sizes between 16 and 21 inches will be available.