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I was expecting yet another minor convenience that doubled the ecological footprint of a thing. But it looks like reducing impact was actually a goal here. Pretty awesome.
Even if these tires aren't good enough for the snobs who want everything to be silent and handle perfectly they'll be great for trailers, yard trucks and other rarely used vehicles that rack up few miles and run run old-ish tires (which tend to be more plagued by slow leaks and whatnot) but still need to go highway speed.
Nothing snobbish about wanting silent tires. Tires are one of the main factors for road noise, and road noise causes adverse health effects and death on a large scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing snobbish about wanting silent tires. Tires are one of the main factors for road noise, and road noise causes adverse health effects and death on a large scale.
It’s also a decent chunk of what causes economic blight for housing nearby highways.
It's only "blighted" because the people who self select to live beside a highway tend not to be the ones who care a ton about making their residence look nice from the street (manicured lawn, nice siding, sealed driveway, etc, etc) so the prices stay cheap, the rents stay low and the cycle continues.
Source: I live beside a highway
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Road noise isn't just a driver aesthetic preference, it's a form of pollution that has direct impacts on human and animal health. I could still be convinced that the sustainability or safety (from fewer blowouts) gains of these would outweigh that, but it's important to consider beings outside of the auto cabin.
Rubber material properties (hardness basically) is a rounding error compared to tread design in terms of road noise and the dominant factor in terms of how long it takes the tire to wear down.
1) airless, check.
2) rechargeable ??
3) connected ??
4) sustainable ??
In 'The Wide Lens' by Ron Adner, he uses Michelin's run-flat tire initiative (PAX) to show how brilliant innovations can fall flat (sorry, couldn't resist) if the entire ecosystem / supply chain is not enabled. In the case of PAX, the service stations (75% of the market is replacement) were not ready. Hopefully, Michelin has the full ecosystem enabled in this case, as this seems promising.
> Rechargeable, connected and sustainable Hmm. Do these have batteries and computers inside? Do they have to? Making things “smart” usually decreases the time span.
In the concept video it’s shown that a 3D printer can print layers on top of the tyre. I think this is what they meant by rechargeable - the ability to “fix” the tyres.
This website is funny in the EU. I have to scroll to the bottom of the disclosure before it lets me press “reject all”, as if I would care about exactly what I’m rejecting.
Not for me. But I'm running uBlock Origin with Javascript disabled. It rendered perfectly.
The concept looks interesting, but I wonder what will happen when a car or trailer with these drives a road with snow / and or grit? The open structure looks perfect for launching anything that will go into the slots into other traffic.
https://michelinmedia.com/site/user/files/44/MNA342_Uptis_Sn...
In 'The Wide Lens' by Ron Adner, he uses Michelin's run-flat tire initiative (PAX) to show how brilliant innovations can fall flat (sorry, couldn't resist) if the entire ecosystem / supply chain is not enabled. In the case of PAX, the service stations (75% of the market is replacement) were not ready. Hopefully, Michelin has the full ecosystem enabled in this case, as this seems promising.
The sad part for Michelin is that not much later BMW started using run-flat tires on all their cars. So it was really just a value-chain issue, not a lack of demand or bad timing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/automobiles/20TIRES.html
Seems to be a really bad value for money.