No more popped beads, punctured sidewalls, air compressors

mcantar18c

mcantar18c

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Fayettnam
Check out Michelin's newish concept tire. Its being used on wheelchairs and construction equipment already, and they've got contracts with NASA for the next rover and the military... passenger cars are just around the corner. Obviously you wouldn't be able to air them up/down, so they'd only be good for trail rigs OR DDs, but they'd definitely have some pretty good offroad benefits. They're retreadable too, no need to replace anything.

http://www.fastcoolcars.com/airless-tires.htm
 
there is another concept out there, cannot find a link atm though, the tire and wheel are like 20 differant pieces (guesstimate, but alot of pieces). thought it was on mazda website, but cannot find it.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if Michelin scrapped that concept. Problems that I can see with them are:-

1. Trapped rocks, mud, clay and ice can throw the wheel out of balance.
2. A solid foreign object getting wedged between the flexible spokes could break the wheel in a bump condition or become a dangerous projectile.
3. In winter, they could freeze to the road and could be damaged if the driver attempted to drive off with frozen wheels.
 
Bigger problem - bigger than safety, bigger than reliability, bigger than performance.......

No place for the manufacturer's name to be seen. Granted, the first to put these out there will have their name well known, but once there's others......
 
Vince said:
I wouldn't be surprised if Michelin scrapped that concept. Problems that I can see with them are:-

1. Trapped rocks, mud, clay and ice can throw the wheel out of balance.
2. A solid foreign object getting wedged between the flexible spokes could break the wheel in a bump condition or become a dangerous projectile.
3. In winter, they could freeze to the road and could be damaged if the driver attempted to drive off with frozen wheels.
Click to expand...

I saw another prototype of these somewhere that had sidewalls. This was just to show proof of concept. But yeah, like was said, this is from 5 years ago, so I'm sure we'd have heard by now if this was going to be sold for pedestrian vehicles.
 
I saw these a couple years ago and thought it was just a joke, making fun of people that put huge rims on cars with tires that have almost no sidewall...guess its really legitimate though.
 
another problem....police stop sticks won't work anymore. Law enforcement wont like em. Big department expense gone down the drain if there was high adoption. Would require more pit maneuvers
 
djblade311 said:
another problem....police stop sticks won't work anymore. Law enforcement wont like em. Big department expense gone down the drain if there was high adoption. Would require more pit maneuvers
Click to expand...




I have NO problem with that. None at all. :D
 
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