Radical new tire design by Michelin. - Hamsafar
officespam.chattablogs.com/archives/039562.html

These tires are airless and are scheduled to be out on the market very soon.
The bad news for law enforcement is that spike strips will not work on these tires.
This is what great R&D will do, and just think of the impact on existing technology:
a... no more air valves
a... no more air compressors at gas stations
a... no more repair kits

SEE LINK ABOVE FOR PICTURES

These are actual pictures taken in the South Carolina plant of Michelin. It will be awhile before they are available to the automotive industry.
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - ijws15
But they look awful. Just imagine one of those with 10ks worth of dirt on it.

Also will it go out of balance because you have just been through a small muddy pool filling one or two of the gaps with mud.

Won't they throw up lots of stones?
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - bathtub tom
I remember airless push-bike tyres, I tried them, They felt like they weren't fully inflated to the thumb test, but they rode like you were on the rims (bum test?). Their rolling resistance wasn't too hot either.

I was told it's all to do with the compressibility of the air inside the tyre, and a little bit of the elasticity of the rubber, not on the ground, distorting that gave ride comfort. In short, the pneumatic tyre is still a genius of design.
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - kithmo
Old news, was mentioned on Michelin site in April 2005.
Ugly and probably expensive things

Edited by kith on 09/06/2008 at 12:43

Radical new tire design by Michelin. - DP
There was a feature in one of the car mags about these a year or so ago. They were panned. Noisy, hard riding and ugly.

I actually think they look cool when the car is in motion though - it looks like the car is floating.

I guess a "cosmetic" sidewall wouldn't be too hard to add.
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - Dynamic Dave
Old news was mentioned on Michelin site in April 2005.


And here in Jan 2005
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=28255

Edited by Dynamic Dave on 09/06/2008 at 13:50

Radical new tire design by Michelin. - FotheringtonThomas
A "tire"?
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - Stuartli
I'm getting tire-d of this story....:-)
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - oilrag
Do you remember those seaside machines where you put 2d in and a bloke howled with laughter in a sort of tune. H HA HA HA HU HU HU Hu, HU Hu Hu Hu Hoooooo.....

Three litre straight six, `Pomp, Snob and Gloat` (Diminished slightly though cos its not a 5.2 litre v8... anyway only counts if repeatedly gloated about..although, thought it was cured at school by getting kicked up the.. ;)

Anyway, (Gordon the Big Engine) pulls into the city sneering through its aloof front grill at `city cars`... Then some kids stick something through the `spokes`. `Clack Clak Clak Clak Ckak Clak Clak Clak, Clak Clak Claaaaak.`

time to go into the Garden....;)



Radical new tire design by Michelin. - Lud
I remember the previous thread on these, three years ago. Still haven't seen any and still haven't heard of them being available or read any sort of objective assessment of them. I would expect them to be expensive, have a very short service life and suffer disastrous fatigue-related failure.

Of course I am sure early motorists devoted to the solid rubber tyre or even the iron-tyred wooden artillery wheel must have snorted the same sort of objections to Mr Dunlop's mysterious circular air sausage. Much too fragile, sure to pick up horseshoe nails or even explode killing everyone within range. And so it turned out. :o}
Radical new tire design by Michelin. - kithmo
What ever happened to the coloured rubber tyres that were in the motoring press a few years back ?
IIRC there were different colours of rubber and even a union jack pattern one available.