It's good to be wary of anything new, and research the heck out of it. The neat thing about these carbide and Aluminum oxide particles (Green 'Diamonds') is that they can help a MT style tire grip on ice sorta like a studded tire. The tire compound is hard enough to last 40 to 45,000 miles they say, yet works very well on ice. The particles are distributed through out the compound and so are present though out the life of the tread. This advantage is not found with studded or sipped tires which loose their effectiveness once worn, say half way. Of more interest to guys up north, one can run MT's year round, in the snow and desert. However, sizes and styles are limited to only a few. This is a relatively new product here.
Here are the MT's and 2 other styles better suited for snow conditions, and they look good!
http://www.greendiamondtireofutah.com/productswest2.html
Although nothing bad has been found about High-tec-re
treading's tires yet, it appears these are a lower cost retread and lower quality (IMHO), as the entire case is not scrubbed to the bead as is done with the recap's sold by the other Green Diamond tire outfits who get them from a factory in Nova Scotia and now emerging plants in the US. These better quality tires are twice the price. The Green diamond compound can only be used by recapping it onto a used casing. Invented in Iceland, and used Sweden, which has high standards of safety, as well as northern Europe in general, they are now catching on here:
Company provided:
http://www.greendiamondtireofutah.com/inthenews.html
Other reviews scattered on the web, compare with Nokian's and Blizzacks, are all favorable. The stand out advantage is studded performance (THE bench mark), long winter service life and year round utility. I suspect no other MT styled tire could come close.
Because they are recycling a tire casing, it can be considered a 'green product', hence the 'green' in Green Diamonds.
