Can an airless tire ever be as cushioning as an airfull tire? Instead of compressing the entire volume of air, aren't you essentially just compressing a small "spring" directly between the rim and the road?
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
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This is why it took so long to get it right. Just like the airless basketball.
These tires have been around for 20 years and still haven't been widely adopted.
To be fair, the concept has been around a long time, however working prototypes are fairly new. Michelin and GoodYear have had their interactions being road tested for the past couple years, modifying the design as per the results of testing. Some changes have included the spokes design and all the rubber composite ratio. Just to be clear, the amount of tires in landfills around the world isn't small, so these being a success is huge for the planet.
I wonder why car tires don't have sealant in them like tubeless bike tires. You can drive over nails and they seal themselves.
As someone who has to deal with rims and tires all day, I freaking hope this never happens. I would rather be stabbed in the leg with a rusty knife than deal with tires packed with sealant.
I cannot even begin to count the number of times I've needed to used the emergency eyewash station because of tire sealant, even with eye protection, the stuff gets everywhere, and customers always seem to "forget" that they used an entire can of sealant to fix their tire leak so we get to be covered in the stuff for hours and scrub the machines down, the walls, the floors everything. Ask any Tire tech what they think of fix-a-flat or tire sealant and you'll likely get a similar response.
Yeah that's a fair point. Replacing bike tires with sealant in them aint fun either.
On all pictures that I find, these airless tires have open sides. Wouldn't that accumulate huge amounts of snow, dirt etc. over time? And if a small rock gets trapped between the rubber, that's probably also not ideal for the longevity of the tire?
My guess is that when they go into production, they'll probably have sidewalls. I think the pre-prod ones are too show the technology inside.
Did they get the road noise issue sorted?