Puncture-Proof Tires Revealed By GM and Michelin (interestingengineering.com) 180
At an event in Montreal earlier this week, Michelin and General Motors unveiled a new airless wheel prototype called the Uptis Prototype, which stands for "Unique Puncture-proof Tire System." The prototype looks like an old-fashioned tire, but has treads in the middle and no sidewalls. Interesting Engineering reports: "Uptis" as it is more simply called, was first unveiled at the Movin'On Summit for sustainable mobility in 2017. The aim is for a complete reshuffle of conventional wheels and tires, so that they are fully replaced as an assembly unit for passenger cars. GM's plan is to start tests at the end of this year on their Michigan-based Bolt Electic Vehicles (EVs).
The airless tire has all-round benefits: less raw material and energy are used in their production, the amount of scrapped tires due to punctures or damage will dramatically minimize, wear and tear issues due to over or under inflation will be eliminated, and roads will become safer with fewer blowouts or flat tires. Michelin has been on the case since 2005 when it unveiled its Tweel system. The Uptis is a production-ready version of the Tweel system. For those not navigating such large vehicles, the Uptis will be just the ticket. Michelin further states that these airless tires won't feel any different to our current, very air-filled ones.
The airless tire has all-round benefits: less raw material and energy are used in their production, the amount of scrapped tires due to punctures or damage will dramatically minimize, wear and tear issues due to over or under inflation will be eliminated, and roads will become safer with fewer blowouts or flat tires. Michelin has been on the case since 2005 when it unveiled its Tweel system. The Uptis is a production-ready version of the Tweel system. For those not navigating such large vehicles, the Uptis will be just the ticket. Michelin further states that these airless tires won't feel any different to our current, very air-filled ones.
Money- (Score:2)
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It's a prototype, usually those come without price tags.
According to the article, first clients would be for fleets and rental cars. If it ever makes it to be a consumer product you better expect it to be significantly more expensive than regular tires.
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Installation should also be cheaper, since you don't have to worry about getting these on and off the rims.
Yeah, instead of spending 2-3 minutes on labor deflating and breaking the bead on the old tire and mounting the new one, you get to pay for a whole new wheel each time instead, and hope that you can still get the same wheels you already have if you're not replacing a full set. I assume they'll be pre-balanced, but it's not like that takes terribly long with pneumatic tires either.
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Yeah, instead of spending 2-3 minutes on labor deflating and breaking the bead on the old tire and mounting the new one, you get to pay for a whole new wheel each time instead, and hope that you can still get the same wheels you already have if you're not replacing a full set.
They're going to rebuild these suckers, reusing the wheel hubs, and replacing everything else. Later models will hopefully just get re-treaded, but these ones will have to be re-spoked. They've only recently come up with a spoke material that's suitable for on-road use at all (resin-coated fiberglass, encased in rubber) and haven't yet invented one that's worth reusing. They won't be used on high-performance cars any time soon, only volume vehicles, and Michelin probably won't produce many styles to begin w
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Interesting. I didn't know that Apple had gotten into the tire business.
I’m game (Score:2)
Sounds like these might be available in a few years, which may very well coincide with when I need to replace my current tires.
Start saving now (Score:2)
These things might not suffer punctures but the tread will still wear down as fast as a normal tyre so you'll be replacing them just as often. And if you have to replace the wheel too , oh boy, kerrrrrCHING!
No thanks, I'll take the risk of a puncture over these any day. I'm sure the military will find a use for them but the general public , no chance.
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Stay off the roads? You mean those roads already filled with vehicles running on pneumatic tyres?
Only people who can't drive lose control of a car when a puncture happens. I assume that would be assclowns like you.
It's not that big a deal (Score:2)
I was on the highway going 70-80MPH when a front tire blew out . The car nosed down a bit but it wasn't that big an issue - I was in the left lane at the time, I just slowed down a lot and gradually moved over to the right shoulder...
Another time in Houston I ran over a 4x4 piece of wood on the highway, again instant destruction of the tire. And I wasn't the only one, I think there were a few pieces on the highway and about five cars were pulled over changing tires. No accidents resulted that I saw.
Just h
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"Guess you haven't seen all those professional racing racings having large crashes after they have blowouts then?"
I guess you haven't seen how fast racing drivers go compared to cars on normal roads. Plus the race suspension which has very little give.
"All of a sudden my speeds is much to high to corner with the failed tyre as the backend steps out. Luckily the lane to my side was empty so I just opened the lock to catch the drift and took a wider turn"
Perhaps you should take your own advice and stay off th
Re:I’m game (Score:5, Interesting)
So would I, the only question is the noise factor and hydroplaning problems on some highways. There's a reason why this stuff didn't pan out back in the 80's and 90's, and it was because the amount of road noise transmitted through a solid core tire is much worse then one filled with air or nitrogen. The other issue is that the solid core jobs do very poorly on roads that have U-shaped pressure wear from heavy traffic, just like with the current phase of 'meaty' wide tires(245-295 width). Those types of tires want to follow the grove easily and make the car dance back and forth in their lane. And it's far worse with those roads when water gets into them, leading to hydroplaning issues.
And before someone goes "but use concrete!" It doesn't last very well in countries that use heavy amounts of salt, brine and chemical deicers to keep the roads clean. Or where you can see rapid freeze-thaw cycles, going from 10C to -20C in 12 hrs.
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...but they don't have a solid core?
Nice (Score:2)
"and roads will become safer with fewer blowouts or flat tires."
I hadn't one of those in 30 years, we're not in the seventies anymore.
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet millions of people still suffer them, every year.
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I was close to that, and had two in a month or two.
We didn't establish what caused the first one, but on the second, there was apparently a "road hazard", and there were vertical chunks out of the tire about every four inches. In hindsight, it's amazing that it held together long enough for the fourth chunk to be torn out, but . . .
Given the tearing of rubber to a significant depth, I suppose that I would have had to replace one of these new-fangled things, too . . .
hawk
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(and now I remember a third one about ten years earlier, but I was in a Miata, and it just felt like a flat with those stupid barely bigger than the wheel tires. The wheels instantly sliced the inner sidewall to bits . . .)
This... this isn't new (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen these prototypes at LEAST ten years ago.
[looks it up] YEP. TEN YEARS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a... [cbsnews.com] [2005 article]
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Actually if you bothered to read the summary you would have gotten 14 years. YEP FOURTEEN YEARS!
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Wait, you thought things stopped being new because of a prototype? Duuuuude.
ROFL
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The Uptis is a production-ready version of the Tweel system.
Michelin X Tweel, Available Now [michelintweel.com].
You can't get more production-ready than a product which is already on the market. If Uptis were production-ready, they'd be producing and selling them. This is the final beta test BEFORE Uptis is production-ready.
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Unless gravel finds its way out of those crevices. (Score:5, Interesting)
....this thing is dead in the water. It is one of those typical lab-proof but not world-proof concepts which I have seen many times in my engineering and scientific careers. Those open chambers/crevices will fill with debris in no time, and the tires will become rigid and, worse of all, uneven across their circumference.
Re:Unless gravel finds its way out of those crevic (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe this is just a prototype for visual use and your problem could be solved as simply as adding a side wall...
Nah clearly an insurmountable issue.
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You can't have a side wall. The rim deforms. In reality this is just not even an issue. Michelin has been selling tweels for years. You do not deserve even a single up mod for that comment since you could not be more wrong. Go look at some UTV tweel videos on the tube.
Welcome to slashdot, where the top comment and the top reply are both wholly ignorant. And users wonder why this place is going in the toilet. It's not the site, it's the users.
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You can't have a side wall. The rim deforms.
I know. I curse having to replace the glass side wall on my wheels. They keep shattering.
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You can't have a side wall. The rim deforms.
I know. I curse having to replace the glass side wall on my wheels. They keep shattering.
If you watch a video of tweels on youtube (Michelin has been selling them for years, in fact, for some specialized types of vehicle) you will see that the rim deforms substantially. This is obvious even in Uptis promotional videos; Michelin has a whole site full of promotional content [michelinmedia.com] which an interested and intelligent party could and would survey before posting to Slashdot, if they wanted to be informed and therefore have anything useful to say about this subject.
Not only that... (Score:2)
The advantage of air tyres is that you can inflate them to different pressures for different cirumstances. Offroad you want low pressure giving a larger footprint for grip, on road for speed you want higher pressure for better cornering and less heat generation (sidewalll deforms less)
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The advantage of air tyres is that you can inflate them to different pressures for different cirumstances. Offroad you want low pressure giving a larger footprint for grip, on road for speed you want higher pressure for better cornering and less heat generation (sidewalll deforms less)
The tweel has rebounding spokes instead of a sidewall, so it returns more of the absorbed energy. Consequently, you can have a larger footprint at all times. The length of the contact patch doesn't affect mileage, only the width (the wheel has to pass over the same length of road either way) so you can avoid a reduction in mileage by using a narrower tread, and still have a larger contact patch.
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Any kind of deformation generates heat as energy is required to deform the tyre. It doesn't matter if its length or width. The greater the length that is deformed then the greater the deformity (think about it) and hence the more heat generated and the more energy wasted.
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Any kind of deformation generates heat as energy is required to deform the tyre. It doesn't matter if its length or width.
Correct. What matters is whether you can get the energy back out usefully or not. Less of the energy is [allegedly] converted into heat in the spokes than in a sidewall.
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Quite possibly. Either way , it'll probably be set to an average of most requirements and won't be ideal for many.
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Of course gravel will sling out of the wheel. Smarter people than you have been working on this for decades. Michelin already has a tweel product on the market and has for YEARS, and what's more, the existing product is for skid-steer loaders, golf carts... And UTVs! If crap collecting in tweels was a real problem, they wouldn't be suitable for off-road vehicles.
TL;DR: No.
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.. which will bring you into the dealerships more often for repairs (and, ironically, new tires, too).
Pretty much exactly like Apple's macbook keyboards.
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Don't be so short-sighted. Their next innovation will pressurise air in the enclosed structure in order to improve comfort.
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Seriously though: they could add another innovation: dozen of tiny pressurised, curved, struts within the rubber tire structure that act as vibration dampers. Or even oil or air filled metal slats that dampen shock.
And they should add a ring of structs that curve in the opposite direction. Cars go in reverse too.
Done, didn't work (Score:2)
Ths has been around for years.
For bikes, for example.
It works, kinda, until they get full of rocks.
Then you're driving on rocks.
Reduce scrap? Allow tires to be patched again. (Score:3)
20 years ago, I never had a problem getting a tire patched. These days, maybe 1 in 4 of my flats can be parched. The reason fiven? Too close to the sidewall. Federal regulations prohibit repair...
No tire manufacture is interested in reducing tire scrap.FULL STOP
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There is a law. However, the people at most tire stores are all Republicans, from the owner down to the workers. They hate rules, they don't read rules, and if they think they can blame the rule and get you to give them more money, they'll do it in a heartbeat.
You have to find a store that considers successfully repairing your tire for a really low fee to be a good thing, a promotion that helps them sell you tires later. That's the only way you're going to get them to actually read the rule and attempt to u
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It may be that your tire shop is lying to you. Or that you suck at parking.
I've had 100% of my flats repaired. The only time they even weren't sure if they could was when the tread was getting thin; they had to measure the tread thickness before patching. But since I don't run my tires down to bald, it turned out there was still plenty of tread in that spot. Most of my flats are screws, sometimes a roofing nail, and they're usually near the side of the tire.
If you really were getting repeated flats on the s
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In Germany if you get a puncture you're required to change all 4 tires.
No you do not. If you have an irreparable puncture and require a new tire you need to replace 2, the tire and it's partner in either the front or rear set. And this is just common bloody sense, unless you damaged a brand new tire.
Shit man I don't even have the same brand for all 4 tires on my car, let alone do anything to all 4 at the same time (other than rotate them).
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If you have an irreparable puncture and require a new tire you need to replace 2, the tire and it's partner in either the front or rear set. And this is just common bloody sense, unless you damaged a brand new tire.
You're more right than the GP, but there is additional complexity involved.
If you have an AWD car, and you get an irreparable puncture, you either need to replace that tire with a used tire with similar wear, or replace all four tires. If you have to replace all four, any reputable tire shop will pay you for your takeoffs, if they still have substantial life left. Of course, you're not getting paid MUCH, but you still get something. Otherwise you get uneven speeds between the front and rear diffs, and that
Can somebody enlighten me... (Score:2)
I also saw the very same design pictured in TFA used for US Embassy cars in
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The news here is that they will be deploying tweels on a sizable test fleet for the first time, which is a sign that they are actually moving forwards on getting these on the market for passenger cars. To date, Michelin has only sold tweels into the consumer market for golf carts, skid steer loaders, and UTVs. This is new technology from the consumer's standpoint, since they have never been able to purchase the like for their cars, and it's obvious why it's news.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Mowers, hand trucks, tractors, and possibly even trailers might be great use cases for them. We'll have to see. The tires themselves might be cheaper to manufacture, but I can't imagine automotive customers being too happy when the net cost of changing a set of tires doubles because they have to buy new wheels each time too.
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If your mower can roll on golf cart or UTV wheels, you can already get tweels for it, and from Michelin no less... And you have been able to for YEARS.
Automotive customers will be plenty happy, because tweels will last longer, and they can be retreaded, and not in a half-assed way like a normal tire. Retread won't be a dirty word, and you'll even be able to use them as steer tires.
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My wheelbarrow has a no-air tire. Works great. Speed rating slow walk.
Mine too, but that's a solid rubber tire. The faster you go, the more energy it wastes. I also have hard solid rubber tires on my hand truck. Dragging it over bumps is awful. I'd like the disc-shaped steel wheels with just rubber rings around them, but those are comparatively spendy. Tweels behave more like a pneumatic tire.
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I'm not a typical consumer, and I drive an almost 20 year old vehicle, but I already buy expensive tires and they're still not a big part of the expense of a vehicle.
When I think about paying twice as much for tires, my first thought is, are they better? In what way?
Last time I was buying tires, I was in the store on a busy day and had to wait in a busy lobby, and I noticed the most popular tires seemed to be the cheapest ones, and the most expensive ones. The limiting factor for a lot of the customers is t
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I'm not a typical consumer, and I drive an almost 20 year old vehicle, but I already buy expensive tires and they're still not a big part of the expense of a vehicle.
I'm in a similar situation. My truck is 17 years old, with about 170,000 miles on it, and a full set of decent (not top-end) Michelins will be a thousand bucks. I'll need new tires pretty soon, and that will be the second-highest expense for the vehicle this year after fuel. Like you, I don't spend more for them because there's no net gain
12 months after release (Score:2)
More likely the price of these things will be stupid expensive so nobody uses them. Then they'll declare there was "no demand" and quietly axe the product.
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Most tires, from experience, get replaced because their treads are worn, not because of blow-outs. In my experience that's four tires replaced every three-six years, rather than one tire replaced every decade, one of which was replaced under warranty.
It's good you mention warranty, so I don't have to. If a tire blows out, it's probably either worn out, or under warranty. So tire manufacturers don't really get paid for blowouts, regardless.
Tough For Mosquitoes (Score:2)
Yeah, they won't collect water for mosquito breeding like the old ones.
Edge cases? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious how those tires hold up in events like skidding, side skidding, etc. When those feathered spokes come under lateral stress, how do they hold up? Or will they break and you wind up on the rim?
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I'm curious how those tires hold up in events like skidding, side skidding, etc.
One of the existing applications for the Michelin Tweel (which you can just go buy, right now) is for skid steer loaders. So they'll work fine for skidding. Michelin wouldn't be putting them on the market if they couldn't handle side skidding, though, and the wide "spokes" suggest resistance to lateral deformation. They are not some fly-by-night Chinese brand, the only thing Michelin tends to get wrong is sidewalls (which always crack) and tweels don't have those. One might even suggest that Michelin is doi
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The "rubber" on tires outgasses important stuff over time, and also hardens. If you're not putting many miles on the tires this isn't going to help because you should already be replacing them before they wear all the way down.
I use Michelin and I don't have any trouble with sidewall cracks. If you check consumer reports or similar, that is not a real thing. It is just a brand preference based on some random event or something somebody once said.
How many times will these be announced??? (Score:2)
This same thing has been announced at leas three or four times in the last decade. Tyres, Tweels, Uptis. Its obviously a scam for investment dollars. Because this is never getting released.
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This same thing has been announced at leas three or four times in the last decade. Tyres, Tweels, Uptis. Its obviously a scam for investment dollars. Because this is never getting released.
Or, those were all products for other types of vehicles, and you're seeing it repeatedly over time because they are real products that are making it to newer, more difficult applications.
"They did this before and it didn't work" (Score:2)
Jeezus, the lack of interest in this because the idea has been around and previous versions had limits in comparison with standard tires.
"I read about this in 2005". Well, no shit Sherlock, I'll bet people in 1969 read about landing on the moon in the 1950s and thought it was BS that never would work.
Do you suppose that maybe materials science, access to better computer modeling, research, all that science shit might have allowed them to actually get this more in parity with conventional tires?
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"I've been watching Star Trek my whole life, how is this `matter transporter' anything new? Boring."
Coup-fourré!!!!! (Score:2)
The best thing is that if you buy them IMMEDIATELY after you get a flat, you get to yell, "Coup-fourré - c'est le puncture proof!!!" and you get a big rebate on your tires.
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In an upsidedown crazy world (Score:2)
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If you want to measure it in the real world instead of in an upsidedown crazy world, you'd have to measure how much value was added instead of cherry-picking "energy and material."
Microplastics (Score:2)
We need a new type of tyre developing , but this is not it!
99% of microplastics found in the ocean are from "tyre dust".
We need to be moving away from rubber and fossil fuels due to their impact on the environment.
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We need a new type of tyre developing , but this is not it!
99% of microplastics found in the ocean are from "tyre dust".
Name a flexible material that can offer traction on tarmac, concrete, metal plates, and dirt, yet is not ablative when used as such. I'll wait.
We need to be moving away from rubber and fossil fuels due to their impact on the environment.
Agreed, but you don't get that from a new kind of tire. You get it from trains, preferably maglev ones, with motors with maglev bearings. Then there's no contact friction, and nothing to wear out except in the electronics (transistors don't switch forever) which means nothing to wear away.
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It might turn out that transistors last nearly forever if the heat was always managed well, and it is only the plastic packaging that is guaranteed to degrade.
They don't use ceramics very often because replacing plastic ones every decade is far enough into the future that managers won't pay more now to reduce that cost.
If you get rid of the moving parts so that way less maintenance is being done, it might seem more reasonable to also use transistors with long-term-stable packaging.
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We need a new type of tyre developing , but this is not it!
99% of microplastics found in the ocean are from "tyre dust".
We need to be moving away from rubber and fossil fuels due to their impact on the environment.
That's a false claim. Just because it was at the top of the chart does not imply it was 99%. It is barely above the #2 source, and way less than 50% of the total.
https://www.ospar.org/document... [ospar.org]
Even in studies such as in Norway ocean waters near a city, it was the combined category of "tires and road dust (asphalt)" that gets cited as together being "most" of the polymer pollution.
All about the details (Score:2)
Efficiency, weight, ride quality, cornering, operation in mud / snow.
It might be great - would be interesting to see a test of a car with these by one of the automobile magazines compared to the same model car with conventional tires.
So (Score:2)
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If this is an "unveiling" why have I seen this thing before?
Because unveiling tells you that the specific thing under the veil has not been shown before. It does not imply anything about the whole type of object being new.
If you read, "Brandybrand(TM) unveiled their fall fashion lineup today," it does not imply that a new type of clothing has been invented, only that the latest model is being shown for the first time.
Words, they're what's for dinner!
Re:Tech from 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
This is from 2005:
https://newatlas.com/go/3995/
I'm sure that I've seen it before that and before that.
Thanks for putting that in. It lets those of us that actually know a little about engineering see quickly what the advances are:
It's interesting the way the article you reference suggests that the old tyre would only be a spare that would work at up to 50 mph for little more than 2,000 miles whilst the new tyre is proposed as a full standard replacement tyre.
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rocks can be stuck and then be thrown at high speed
Regular tires also have this problem. Press a rock with the edge of the tire and see it fly like a bullet.
or because vandalism.
Ah yes, because regular tires are totally vandal-proof.
Also, less comfort because air is compressible faster than rubber upon impact
Wondering what regular tires have on the inside... Ah yes, air. Who would have thought?
and less resistance to sideway deformation upon centrifugal forces.
I was actually wondering about that myself. Probably the only sane argument you brought.
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Press a rock with the edge of the tire and see it fly like a bullet.
The rock can only fly at the speed that the car is travelling, which is about 5% of the speed of a bullet, giving it about 0.25% of the energy for the same mass.
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Have you ever tried to squeeze a cherry core between your fingers?
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and less resistance to sideway deformation upon centrifugal forces.
I was actually wondering about that myself. Probably the only sane argument you brought.
Nope, that was ignorant too. Ever seen a tire with a tall profile during sideways skidding? It deforms like a motherfucker. Tires deform A LOT during ordinary use, let alone performance driving. I've got a 1982 300SD, they have great weight distribution and you can drift them (albeit slowly, due to the great leaden lump of the OM617, which has all of 120 HP.) But if you see what the tires look like while that happens you will swear that they are about to asplode. The tread is damned near 50% out of position
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Keyword here being "shocks".
In classic tires, it's not the air within that provides shock absorption, but the rubber elasticity.
Re:Old tech (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like mentioned in the summary, yeah?
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Eye of the beholder and all that (Score:2)
I like them though I will admit they'll probably look better on a 4x4 than a BMW 7 series.
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Yeah. Why can't they have thin sidewall "veneer" or sorts to disguise it better?
And keep the leaves out.
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Not to mention the blender effect when a rodent runs into them at speed. Rotting bits of flesh in there is going to be awesome!
Cool looking but Mud? (Score:3, Interesting)
if this gets packed mud,sticks or a rock?
I appreciate them rethinking the wheel. Good idea.
Maybe cheaper? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't need a pressure seal on the wheel, then you can go to a different mount. If the mount allows a consumer to slide the tire on and off without the pneumatic equipment used in tire stores then it's potentially cheaper to install and to rotate.
I wonder if it still requires wheel balancing?
However one of the downsides of making the tire store less expensive is they create the potential that they will be racing to the bottom in cost. that is, if before 2/3 the cost was the dealer markup and mounting, then the mariginal difference between name brand and hooka-pook-looka branded tire isn't worth the hassle especially if there won't be a dealer to have a replacement nearby when you get that flat.
But if you now put all the price into the tire itself and sell it on amazon rather than a dealer for a consumer self-install, price does matter. there's no longer a small margin on a fixed high cost of mounting and balancing and rotating and winter storage.
So this actually might not be so good for major brands.
Wheel based directional suspension? (Score:3)
It seems to me this system has a rather unique advantage they could exploit. You now have the capacity to make the tires directional in more than trivial ways. Currently you can make the tread assymetric front and back. and youmight be able to do interesting things with the fiber weaves.
But this is different. You could imagine they could make a tire that was stiff to radial loads but soft to tangential loads. If you did that then the car would ride high with little wheel compression on a flat road to ge
better braking too? (Score:2)
It seems to me this system has a rather unique advantage they could exploit. You now have the capacity to make the tires directional in more than trivial ways. Currently you can make the tread assymetric front and back. and youmight be able to do interesting things with the fiber weaves.
But this is different. You could imagine they could make a tire that was stiff to radial loads but soft to tangential loads. If you did that then the car would ride high with little wheel compression on a flat road to get good gas milage but an obstruction like a pot hole or a rock or speedbump which strikes the tire non-radially would find the tire soft and compliant.
Looking at the design my intial guess is they havent optimized it for that. But I can't be sure as I'm not a tire physics guru. But there is a latent potential here for a revolutionary tire that is stiff for flat roads and stiff for steering but shock absorbing for bumps.
Perhaps it would also flatten out and increase the surface contact under the sheer load of braking.
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I thought the first electric vehicles looked and worked differently was because they were marketed to women. Push button to start instead of a crank, tiller instead of steering wheel, opposing seats, even places to put flowers. And that box shape was quite different from the usual car, though some did look much like a regular car.
Look at this ad, steer with a tiller or wheel depending on where you sit, seats that can rotate and various other differences, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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At the time Tweels were originally announced, they were mostly limited to off-road and low-speed use (construction equipment mostly). This was due to excessive heat generation, from energy losses during the constant flexing motions in the deformation zone, as well as noise issues.
Presumably they've found a way to fix these problems. But whether it be from improved design or materials -- the article doesn't say how these issues were resolved.
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Presumably they've found a way to fix these problems. But whether it be from improved design or materials -- the article doesn't say how these issues were resolved.
The [typically, traditionally] garbage article linked to the story doesn't say, but this Engadget article [engadget.com] and also this fact sheet from the Michelin media site [michelinmedia.com] both make it clear that the difference is fiberglass in the spoke material.
Re: Cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching (Score:3)
I'm a life-long cyclist, and while I can't speak for their auto tires, Michelin makes the best, most durable tires for road bicycles. Nothing else even comes close. Continental? Flats within 2 days.
Michelin Pro Race 3's? I went 10 years on one pair. Kevlar sidewalls and all. Worth every penny.
Re: (Score:2)
Kevlar is a great thing for bike tires.
My current bike runs tubeless with sealant and I'm even more impressed with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Michelin does make some nice tires, at least for regular road use. They also make some crappy ones that are sold at Walmart.
Re: (Score:2)
I have run flats on my BMW. They ride like shit, but it is nice not having to stop to fix flat tires.
If you drive on them flat you are supposed to replace them. I've never had a problem just getting them patched, though not every tire shop has the equipment to deal with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Try turning off javascript.
I use NoScript and uMatrix and uBlock Origin, and I didn't have to do anything to see the content.
You must have shit halfway turned on, halfway turned off.
Re: (Score:2)
"Those aren't new vegetables, I saw vegetables just like that 10 years ago!"
"OK, Grandpa, here, eat these dried ones, you're right they really are 10 years old."