Have you seen the video. The audi they used went through the little autocross course as if it was using a regular tire with no damage to the rim.

 

here's the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzPmLUta-_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqRJ9GfIJtI

 

exactly. if the tire had a sidewall on it to maintain airpressure within those smaller spaces i could see it doing much better. but i cannot imagine that a pothole at 50mph would do anything good to a wheel wioth that tire on it.

however, im very interested to see how this could be applied to tractors and perhaps urban military vehicles.

we spend lots of time and money trying to stiffen our suspensions, why wouldnt you by a tire thats a floppy as a noodle? i doubt that there can be any performance and handling gains with something like that.

"available for low speed vehicles like the segway".... im sold. plus the video of the bobcat loader didnt impress me, if theres that much give at low speed on minor bumps what would it do with a full load in the bucket?

 

The "new" tire design works in fundamentally the same manner as a pneumatic tire. What nobody ever realizes is that conventional pneumatic tires don't "holdup" the wheel from the bottom; rather, the wheel is suspended inside the tire and "hangs" from the top. Picture the outside tread pat of the Tweel design- not the radiating spokes, just the tread ring. Its natural shape is circular, right? Same as the tread around a conventional tire. If you cut the sidewall totally off of your standard tires, the remaining tead would still be round when you stand it up. If you then hang something from the top, what happens? The weight tries to pull down the topmost part of the circle, which causes it to lose its shape, and become shorter across the diamter vertically, and longer horizontally.

This is where the air pressure in pneumatic tires (and the steel/kevlar belts) and the rubber spokes in a Tweel come in. Both are mechanical systems for preventing that horizontal diamater from expanding. Since the diameter of the tread can't change, and the horizontal radius can't get larger, the vertical diamater is forced to stay relatively the same. The bulge at the bottom of a pneumatic tires comes from the same forces that "bulge" the bottom of of the Tweel.

 

Also, remember that the Tweel is a very new technology. Imagine where radial tires were as far as performance 50 years ago. I don't think it's farfetched to suggest Tweels may replace pneumatic tires in many applications in the near future, though not all.

 

itl never work for the mass car market in its current form for one simple reason.



the wheel and tire are one peice. no matter how many contracts they get to make BBS/MoMO/Volk ect ect tweels theres no way they can match the fact that my wheels came from seattle, my tires came from roseville, and if i dont like the tires i dont need new wheels.

if the tweel design was crossplatform compatable (ie, i could stick tweels on my stockers) theres a chance they would do really well, but even my mower has seperate wheels and tires.

this doesnt even take into considderation things like tread patern (theres tons of propriatary tread paterns) and user prefference (you like michelin and i like bridgestone), or the fact that you loose the ability to adjust tire pressure for different conditions whichs means they wont make it on the track either.


besides think about all the sh*t blowing around on our roads that could get caught in there and how hard wheels are to clean already. can you even comprehend trying to apply tire shine to that thing?

 

FYI, that's just the technology demonstrator. It has a greater impact when you see the open sidewall and how it works. Production models will have a conventional solid sidewall.

The real strength for these will be industrial uses, where you have vehicle-specific fitments and load ratings, so a specific wheel-tire combo is implied anyways. They're not meant for the performance market, as you simply can't get damping with a solid tire on a very short sidewall, as well as the fact that these are designed for areas where the need is for a low-maintenance setup. Most performance guys don't fit that profile. The passenger car applications are going to be geared to spare tires or fleet sales, where you'd have sets rotating on and off, getting sent in for refitting, etc.

 

What Aaron said.

 

hence my comment about military apps ect. good to know it will have a sidewall and i could see a big market in it for spares (spares that are flat already suck) but im not sure how well it could compete with the full solids they run at places like the dump (when the union isnt striking).