Ride comfort on those?
Michelin Airless
21–30 of 316 posts
Re: Michelin Airless
#22I don't worry about punctures at all, despite living in a country with a shitty roads. What I worry about A LOT is a catastrophic collision of tire with a 90 degree sharp pothole edge, often made by roadworkers before doing point repair, which potentially can destroy tire irreparably. I wonder if these tires are better protected against such impacts, and just looking at them it seems they are - no side walls which ar…
These tires do have sidewalls. The sidewalls are removed for marketing and demonstration purposes only.
Re: Michelin Airless
#23Good video I just found
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql0Mkr3dwNU
Re: Michelin Airless
#24Interesting that they say nothing about consumption. I would expect them to be less fuel efficient, but having some number to go by would be nice.
Re: Michelin Airless
#25I always wonder how these things would stand up to stones getting caught in between the rubber “spokes“.
I don't think that part of the tire is open to the outside -- you're seeing a cross-section in the pictures and video.
For airless tires I've used a 4x4 (quad), the tires are open on the side just like these images.
Re: Michelin Airless
#26Former automotive engineer chiming in. "Tweels" have been around a long time, but have always failed in terms of "NVH" (noise, vibration, harshness). Michelin is claiming that this generation of tweels are appropriate for passenger cars, which means that they think they've solved the NVH problem. They seem to be marketing these alongside EVs, I wonder if they're only really intended for lighter, compact-style cars. (…
Complete layman here, every 6 months or so for the past decade I see an article claiming someone got air-less tires working. What are the chances this would be it ?
At some point they will be viable... whether this is that point or not is yet to be seen.
Re: Michelin Airless
#27I don't worry about punctures at all, despite living in a country with a shitty roads. What I worry about A LOT is a catastrophic collision of tire with a 90 degree sharp pothole edge, often made by roadworkers before doing point repair, which potentially can destroy tire irreparably. I wonder if these tires are better protected against such impacts, and just looking at them it seems they are - no side walls which ar…
These tires do have sidewalls. The sidewalls are removed for marketing and demonstration purposes only.
I guess the point is if they can be removed for demonstrations, then they're not critical to the structure.
Re: Michelin Airless
#28Interesting that they say nothing about consumption. I would expect them to be less fuel efficient, but having some number to go by would be nice.
As a general rule, tweels are worse for fuel consumption -- they are both heavier and have more rolling resistance. (Edit: weight automatically adds rolling resistance, but so does flexion, which tweels have more of. So tweels are a double-whammy for fuel economy.)
Re: Michelin Airless
#29Former automotive engineer chiming in. "Tweels" have been around a long time, but have always failed in terms of "NVH" (noise, vibration, harshness). Michelin is claiming that this generation of tweels are appropriate for passenger cars, which means that they think they've solved the NVH problem. They seem to be marketing these alongside EVs, I wonder if they're only really intended for lighter, compact-style cars. (…
Compact EVs aren't "lighter" though, are they? I wonder if it is the inverse of that - heavier compact-style cars with relatively large amounts of sprung weight.
Re: Michelin Airless
#30Former automotive engineer chiming in. "Tweels" have been around a long time, but have always failed in terms of "NVH" (noise, vibration, harshness). Michelin is claiming that this generation of tweels are appropriate for passenger cars, which means that they think they've solved the NVH problem. They seem to be marketing these alongside EVs, I wonder if they're only really intended for lighter, compact-style cars. (…
EVs are usually much heavier than gas cars.