Why Are Car Tires Always Black? Here's Why Color Matters

Part of the fun of car ownership is the degree of customization you have over it. You can paint your car whatever color you want, change out the trims and material of the seats, stick a bunch of knick-knacks on the dashboard, and so on. However, no matter how in-depth you get with your car's customization, there's one element of your vehicle that always seems to remain uniform: the tires.

It's a little disappointing that your tires always have to be neutral black. Surely, having tires in a rainbow of colors would grant an even greater degree of personality to your vehicle, not unlike the cool white tires you had on your childhood bicycle. However, even if you find the black tires on your car to be aesthetically unpleasant, the fact of the matter is that they're like that for a very good reason. The distinctive black color of car tires arises from a vital chemical component in their creation, one that, if absent, would severely diminish the tire's overall longevity and resilience.

In the oldest days of automotive engineering, rubber tires weren't even a thing. Vehicle wheels were originally made of wood, upgrading to solid metal once the first automobiles started driving around. Unfortunately, driving on solid metal wheels is incredibly uncomfortable, as there's nothing to absorb the bumps and grit of the road. It's also dangerous in the winter, as solid metal doesn't provide any traction to grip the road in slippery conditions.

Around the late 1800s, automotive engineers started tinkering with ways to make the driving experience a bit smoother. The answer they hit upon was sturdy rubber tires, created from a combination of synthetic and natural rubber materials. This was a big step in the right direction, but it wasn't quite perfect yet — these prototypical tires, colored bright white from the rubber mixing process, were too receptive to external temperature. When it got hot out, they'd turn gummy and goopy, and when it got cold, they'd completely solidify into a state no better than the solid metal wheels. Engineers continued iterating on the tire rubber formula, incorporating other chemicals and substances into the mix in the hopes of shoring up their tires against the elements.

At the turn of the 1900s, a British automotive engineer named Sidney Charles Mote finally struck paydirt on the mystery of rubber car tires. As part of his team's experiments, Mote tried incorporating some loose soot, leftover from industrial crafting, along with cotton threads to bind things together. The addition of this compound to the rubber mix turned the entire thing a deep black. It wasn't just coloration that changed, though; tires produced from this dark rubber were sturdier and more resilient against sudden temperature shifts. The various ingredients of the mix were stabilized by the soot compound, giving them strength while still allowing them to flex and endure the road.

This compound was dubbed carbon black, and has remained the secret ingredient of all automotive tires to this very day. Scientists have estimated that a tire without carbon black in its mix would only last around 5,000 miles, which means you'd need to pay to replace them multiple times a year. All that said, some tires utilize a small amount of rubber mix without carbon black to maintain the pure white coloration. These whitewall tires are pretty stylish, though they can be a pain to care for. Sometimes, for the sake of your car's safety and longevity, you just have to settle for the standard coloration. If you want style, maybe try low-profile tires instead.