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i dont think they'd release the product like that. be a pain in the ass to keep all thoes spokes clear of debris.

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Originally posted by Qoo
but look at the bright side, no more puncture tires.
no tire rotation, (just buy a new one), err I mean balancing.



use a plastic cover:bthumbup: hehe

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Originally posted by drastik
they should be spinners.

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Originally posted by gee_tee_eye
thanks for posting the picture... i dont know if i like the wheels of not... they would only be good for long trips and luxury cars... cornering fast would just cause them to buckle and create body roll... we will see if they get put into mass production... probably make them for something smaller like bikes or motorcycles...

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Michelin has taken it upon itself to reinvent the wheel, or at least the tire that rides upon it.

You’re driving down the road on a family vacation. Maps are spread across the dash, empty coffee cups from this morning’s breakfast sit in the cup-holders, and the kids are dozing in the back seat. Suddenly the steering wheel starts shaking and the car starts to sway. You are pulled to the left into oncoming traffic. The kids are awake and screaming. A semi slams on its brakes, smoke pouring from the tires as the massive vehicle grows in your windshield.

According to Statistics Canada, over 3,000 people are killed in vehicle collisions in Canada, on average, each year. Well over 220,000 people are injured in motor vehicle collisions. Michelin of North America is taking a big step towards reducing those numbers.

The 2005 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit saw the release of a new tire design that, if Michelin has its way, will likely be on our cars within the next decade. The French tire manufacturer has been at the forefront of tire technology ever since André and Édouard Michelin made their first attempt at the implementation of a pneumatic (air filled) rubber tire on a race car in 1895. Their revolutionary tire designs continued with the invention of the radial tire in 1946, the standard on which nearly all passenger car tires today are built.

Once again Michelin has put forth the newest technology which it believes will eventually render pneumatic tires obsolete. This new tire is named the Tweel, and it’s like nothing you have ever seen before. The design uses a small center wheel connected to the outer tire skin with a lattice of flexible polyurethane spokes, thereby eliminating the need for air to keep your tires rolling down the road. Checking tire pressure, fixing flats and enduring highway blow-outs are problems that can be eliminated if the Tweel technology does what Michelin promises. The thousands of lives lost each year to high speed blow-outs and roadside tire changes were reason enough for Michelin to explore the possibilities of alternative tire designs.

So the question is, does the Tweel do what Michelin says? The answer is yes. And no.

The standard in the automobile industry for the past 40 years has been the steel belted radial tire. Though invented in the 1940s, the design was not widely accepted in North America until the 1970s. The radial tire has a series of steel belts molded into the casing underneath the tread to help protect against punctures. While a current tire requires up to 23 separate parts to create each finished tire, the Tweel uses only four. This simplicity, combined with increased tire life and better road feel, is turning heads among tire consumers and producers alike.

However, the Tweel is not yet up to the standards of current radial tires in ride comfort, fuel consumption or cost according to a Michelin press release. The good news for Michelin is that these are three minor issues to overcome at this early stage of development. Ride comfort can be controlled and adjusted through the use of differently sized polyurethane spokes, fuel consumption is already very close to matching current radial tires (within one per cent), and costs will certainly go down as the tire designs near production. One of the foreseeable problems for Canadian drivers will be the open spoke design. Snow and mud trapped in the wheels have the potential of causing imbalance and severe tire vibrations at higher speeds. Though Michelin wants to avoid the use of a sidewall, engineers are at work developing a method for the tire to shed the debris from the spokes by itself.

On the plus side, the Tweel designers have managed to increase lateral (side to side) stiffness to nearly five times that of a typical passenger car tire. This helps immensely to increase steering response and handling in passenger vehicles. Lateral and vertical stiffness are also able to be adjusted independently from each other, giving designers the ability to fine tune each tire for its intended purpose. Currently, a tire’s lateral and vertical stiffness are determined primarily by the air pressure inside the tire. This means that when you increase tire pressure to improve steering response, you also increase vertical stiffness, which leads to a much harsher ride for the vehicle’s occupants. Increased tire pressures also create a smaller tire contact patch on the road, decreasing grip and vehicle handling. The Tweel has been designed to maintain twice the contact patch of the typical radial tire, but that extra contact patch is currently causing a five per cent increase in rolling resistance.

The outer tire tread is similar to compounds in use on traditional radial tires, except that the Tweel tires will last three times as long (400,000+ km) and be able to have new treads applied for a fraction of the cost associated with the purchase of new radial tires. Because the whole tire will not need replacing, the amount of waste produced when remounting new treads will save billions of kilograms of waste rubber in one year alone. “About 80 per cent of the content of the (radial) tire is still serviceable when the tire is scrapped,” notes Michelin PR rep. John Love. “In Tweel there would be less material used because all you are making is the tread.” The bad news is that the initial costs for producing the wheel and spokes for the Tweel system will have to be reduced substantially if they are to come into production.

Automotive Applications

Michelin has been using an Audi A4, a high-performance luxury sedan, as its test bed for the automotive versions of the Tweel. So far testing has shown that the Tweel does not yet measure up to current automotive tires, but the potential is there.

"The Tweel automotive application, as demonstrated on the Audi, is definitely a concept, a stretch application with strong future potential," Gettys says. "We see a tremendous advantage for handling. We are seeing some limitations for noise and some types of comfort on rough roads. It envelops obstacles, but it's not ready for the automobile."

Despite the current limitations, Michelin will continue to develop the Tweel for what is the largest potential market for the new tire.

Military Applications

The first place the Tweel is likely to be seen in wide use is within military forces all over the world. Since stopping to repair flats can be extremely dangerous for soldiers, the U.S. military in particular has expressed strong interest in the airless tire technology.
Vehicles stopped in military hot zones are extremely vulnerable to ambushes, while landmines and other explosives can disable trucks and put military personnel in peril because of damage to tires.
Preliminary tests show it’s possible for Tweel tires on slow-moving vehicles to run over explosives that break some of the spokes and even tear off some of the tread, while the vehicle is able to keep rolling. “It looks ragged, but it continues to move," says Terry Gettys, president of Michelin America’s Research and Development Center. The design of the Tweel also directs the blast energy of landmines and other explosives outward, rather than upward and into the vehicle as traditional tires do.
John Love wants to make it clear that no specific military applications have been targeted as of yet, but a larger stronger tire is being developed for use on military vehicles that currently ride upon the vulnerable pneumatic tires. The Tweel being developed for construction skid steers (Bobcat sized machines) is of great interest to the military because of the similarities between the skid steer drive-train and heavy tank drive-trains.

Personal Mobility Applications

To demonstrate the Tweel’s performance potential, Michelin displayed its new tire design in several applications at the NAIAS. The design that is closest to production was displayed on the iBOT™ mobility systems. The articulating mobility device offers disabled people the ability to climb stairs and navigate uneven terrain that traditional wheelchairs are unable to negotiate.

Segway LLC's Concept Centaur, a prototype that applies Segway’s self-balancing technology to a four-wheel device, has been equipped with the Tweel to increase its performance potential.

As you crank the wheel to the right you brace yourself for the impact. The blast of the semi’s air horns intermingle with the screeching of tires. The truck driver veers to the right and 20 tons of steel misses your rear bumper by a few centimeters. Slowly, the car rolls to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. As you step out of the vehicle, your hands are shaking and you find it hard to stand. Sitting on the edge of the highway looking at the frayed tire, you think to yourself, “There has to be a better way.”

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Originally posted by oldraven
I suppose it would just take a softer compound for the spoke rubber to keep the ride and lower the profile. I see a lot of promise in these tires.

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