Airless tires coming to cars

[MTNRCKT]

Thought this was interesting and I remember seeing a thread here a while back about mtn bike tires similar to these. Thought the idea sounded silly at the time, but who knows, maybe there's something to it:



http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/airless-tires-roll-towards-consumer-vehicles

Not sure if there would be any benefits for a mtn bike though? Road bike maybe.

[Carbon_Dude]

Looks like it would be a heavy tire.

[MTNRCKT]

I agree, but when you see them in bike form it looks like they might would be light enough:

[Sitar_Ned]

I could see them being good for road bikes too. For the short amount of time I had mine, whenever I was hitting 30 mph, going downhill looking at that skinny tire, I would always think "it would really suck to have a blowout right now".. Probably as mostly unfounded concern but, regardless, that's what was running through my mind. It seems this would alleviate that completely.

[cmh]

I could see them being good for road bikes too. For the short amount of time I had mine, whenever I was hitting 30 mph, going downhill looking at that skinny tire, I would always think "it would really suck to have a blowout right now".. Probably as mostly unfounded concern but, regardless, that's what was running through my mind. It seems this would alleviate that completely.

None of these concepts are new, and just like the spoked bicycle wheel, there have been a bunch of "improvements" that folks have come up with over the years but we keep winding up with the same technology that worked at the dawn of the bicycle.

"Energy return wheel" reminds me of the Slingshot bicycle. I've even got one, and I love it for its whacky freakishness, but if it really did return energy, all bikes would be made that way. They aren't. Same with those tires - tires have some definite shortcomings, but for the things that we need in a bike tire, it's hard to beat the existing combination. Not to say something better won't come along at some point, but I haven't seen it happen yet.