The Lightest Truck Wheel, Made The Most Sustainable
Maxion Wheels has achieved the next threshold in weight loss for steel truck wheels, with a 22.5 x 9.00 development wheel weighing less than 30 kg. This breakthrough wheel is also Maxion’s most sustainable truck wheel. By applying innovative design techniques, efficient manufacturing processes, an energy mix including renewable electricity and low carbon steel, the new truck wheel is not only Maxion’s lightest, it’s the greenest with a cradle-to-gate evaluation of 1.853 kg CO2/kg. However, while continuing efforts to meet customers sustainability targets, we also need to navigate ways to share the responsibility for related investments.
Unique Lightweighting Process
Wheels are one of the heavier components on a truck. Improving wheel mass – while preserving safety, quality and performance – can benefit both fuel efficiency and payload. Maxion’s unique Lightweighting Process integrates all key performance and design parameters into advanced structural and simulation tools, enabling our wheel experts to combine materials expertise with production know-how. This approach provides customers with significant weight savings, for instance, a weight reduction of just 3 kg per wheel can boost payload by over 40 kg, improving both fuel efficiency and reducing the carbon footprint. It also resulted in a distinctive leaf-shaped vent hole design for the new lightweight wheel.
Through advanced simulation and materials expertise, our Lightweighting Process offers lighter, stronger wheels that enhance performance and sustainability for our customers.
A lightweight wheel design requires less raw material and therefore, naturally results in a reduced carbon footprint.
Low CO2 Steel Fast Tracks Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions
Approximately 75-85% of a wheel’s CO2 footprint originates from its raw materials. Steel, with the lowest CO2 footprint from a primary metal delivers an immediate carbon footprint reduction for fleets. Incorporating green metal into wheel production accelerates the path to sustainability.
The new lightweight green wheel was designed in Maxion’s Global Engineering Center for Steel Wheels in Königswinter, Germany, and produced in the Company’s energy-efficient and highly automated commercial vehicle steel wheels plant in Manisa, Türkiye.
With 60-70% of Maxion Wheels’ total revenue purchased goods, our global supply chain is a major factor in the company’s sustainability targets and value creation. To achieve the necessary improvements in our sustainability performance, continuous and purposeful collaboration with our supply chain partners is a company priority.
Using Life Cycle Assessments to Further Reduce Our Carbon Footprint
Another lever to monitor and show reduction potentials for our carbon footprint is the use of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). LCA is a systematic approach to analysing the environmental impact over the course of the entire life cycle of a product, material, process, or other measurable activity. It allows us to optimise our overall production processes and associated supply chain (both upstream and downstream) to produce wheels with a lower environmental impact. These benefits can then in turn be passed on to our customers.
In the case of Maxion’s new green truck wheel, the decrease in CO2 emissions is significant between the series production wheel, and its new sustainable counterpart.
Lightweight Sustainable Truck Wheel Has 60% Fewer Emissions
Our life cycle analysis data highlights priorities for action and drives continuous advances. It also helps us work closely with value chain partners on research, concepts and pilots to deliver major CO2 reductions in series production.
Customer Sustainability Requirements
Today, Maxion Wheels is actively running several customer programs that require specific “green” energy and/or materials sourcing, and we know these requirements will only increase. These same requirements come with no standardization.
One such standard is defining how to measure and communicate equivalent emissions at the wheel level. When an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) is looking to reduce its carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) footprint, the wheel, one of the vehicle’s more prominent components, is one of the first parts under consideration.
By knowing the main influence factors for the LCA, one can quickly predict the environmental impact for wheels, but the LCA value does not qualify as a distinguishing indicator for sustainability performance by itself. What is missing is mass and load capacity adding lightweight performance to the sustainability evaluation.
By working within the closed cradle-to-gate life cycle evaluation, Maxion Wheels and its industry partners developed a Sustainability Indicator methodology that addresses the industry’s need for a standard definition and rating approach to calculate and report CO2e emissions at the wheel level.
Like the European Union’s energy consumption labelling scheme, the Wheel Sustainability Indicator Label adhered to the finished wheel would give vehicle manufacturers and consumers a clear signal of how “green” the wheel is.
Making Sustainability Affordable
Scaling up Maxion’s green wheel development requires commitment from customers. When considering the adoption of green wheels at the OEM fleet level, this emissions-reducing investment can contribute to a vehicle manufacturer’s overall efforts to meet stringent CO2 targets - driven by stakeholders and regulation.
To reduce the carbon footprint of our products, it is essential that we collaborate with our customers to share this responsibility. Being able to assess the CO2 of each wheel ensures a transparent enterprise approach to sustainability.
Maxion Wheels Continues to Set Industry Standard
Maxion’s commitment to sustainability and innovation is driving the development of advanced, lightweight wheels that not only enhance performance but also significantly reduce carbon emissions. By integrating ultra-low CO2 steel, efficient manufacturing processes, and cutting-edge design techniques, Maxion Wheels has set a new benchmark with its greenest, lightest truck wheel. As customer sustainability requirements continue to grow, Maxion remains at the forefront, offering solutions that balance environmental impact and affordability, helping our partners meet their CO2 reduction goals while maintaining competitiveness in the market.
