About seven gallons of oil are used in the production of each car tire. To reduce their dependence on the fickle supply of petroleum, Goodyear Tire and Rubber has experimented with soybean oil and discovers it works pretty well.

Goodyear have discovered that their soy tires require less energy to manufacture and last up to 10% longer using feedstock that costs about the same with today’s prices.

Bicycle tires and tubes are manufactured from petroleum-based synthetic rubber. Bicycle tire production costs increased sharply in 2008 along with everything else that depends on petroleum for production when the price of oil shot up.