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AssigneeBridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC
InventorsDave Laubie, Len Hollinger, Greg James, Guy Walenga
Estimating the term…
Exemplary embodiments provide a technique for determining life cycle cost of a tire that includes combining initial purchase information and an assessment of operating costs for a customer. Determination of operating costs includes correlating roll resistance with respect to inflation pressure and vehicle imposed load of the tire, as well as usage of the tire. The inflation pressure and vehicle imposed load are acquired for a configuration of the vehicle. The roll resistance can be determined for the pressure and load of the tire at a characteristic tread depth. The fuel consumption required for overcoming the roll resistance by the vehicle can be determined from the roll resistance and a unit cost of the fuel consumption. The operating cost can be determined from the fuel consumption multiplied by the unit cost. The life cycle cost can be determined by combining the purchase cost and the operating cost of the tire.
A method for determining tire life cycle cost, comprising:
A machine-readable storage medium having executable software code for determining tire life cycle cost, the software code comprising:
A method for selling tires to a customer, wherein one factor includes determining tire life cycle cost, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.