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Transportation Science

Why Cars Still Don't Have Airless Tires, Yet (jalopnik.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Twenty years after Michelin introduced the Tweel in 2005, airless tires remain absent from passenger vehicles despite their promise to "eliminate nearly 200 million scrap tires a year caused by flats and underinflation," according to Michelin's internal testing cited in a Jalopnik report. Current prototypes "tend to transfer more road noise and vibration into the cabin than traditional radials -- making the ride harsher, especially at highway speeds." Heat dissipation poses additional challenges as "airless designs -- particularly those with internal webbing or solid cores -- have fewer ways to shed thermal load." The added structural mass "can affect fuel economy and increase unsprung weight -- bad news for handling and suspension tuning." Federal regulations compound these technical barriers since vehicle tires are subject to rigorous performance standards, many of which assume air pressure as a baseline.

Why Cars Still Don't Have Airless Tires, Yet More | Reply

Why Cars Still Don't Have Airless Tires, Yet

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  • Tires come right off, and new ones can be put right back on. It's pretty easy; my elderly aunt used to do it. If this technology is really superior, we don't need a big concerted push to transition to it. We can just offer people a choice, and see what they choose over the long term.

    These new tires may last much longer, and never go flat, but eventually they are going to get thrown away. Are they any better for the environment if they last four times longer but contain eight times as much rubber?

    • (Yes, I'm conflating "changing a tire" as in replacing the whole wheel with "replacing a tire" as in putting a new tire on an old wheel. Fine: My middle-aged uncle used to do it.)

      • There are repeated examples of misdirections in cars and consumer products, much so that even environmental activist groups fault the EV for overpolluting.

        https://www.sierraclub.org/sie... [sierraclub.org]
        EVs Have No Tailpipe Pollution, but There Are Still Problems When the Rubber Meets the Road

        Tires shed significant amounts of metallic particles, microplastics, and chemical compounds when the rubber meets the road.

        The heavier the vehicle, the more particulate matter its tires release. That means electric vehicles, which we

    • Re:This oil change could have been an email. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @01:46PM (#65590122)
      You can change a wheel with a tire attached, bit I'm skeptical your aunt could actually put new rubber on a wheel. I do all my own maintenance but I'm not equipped to mount, balance or align tires in my shade-tree operation.
      • And EDIT -- Yes, I get these wheels are hub-less (in Michelin's terms), but that's not what your aunt was dealing with.
      • You can buy a tool at Harbor Freight to change the tire on the rim. It still requires some physical strength, and I would not use it on nice alloys, but steel wheels who cares? I don't think DIY balancing is a thing though.

        • For a truck tire you can do it with a bubble level and balancing beads. I wouldn't do it with a passenger car tire.

          • Why is a passenger tire different?

            • Same reason it's trivial to change a mountain bike tire but hard to change a road bike tire. The size, the profile, the shape all make it easier to manipulate one vs the other. The resulting use of the tire makes precision less important. You don't need to worry about balancing or perfectly mounting a tire on a truck, but you run into a massive insurance risk if your tire comes off doing 95mph on the autobahn and you were caught changing it yourself. A large tire on a small rim can be put in place redneck s

    • Tread Wear, not Puncture (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @02:13PM (#65590178) Journal

      These new tires may last much longer

      Will they last longer? Everytime I have replaced tyres it has been because the tread became too worn, not because they got a puncture. Why will an uninflated tyre's tread last longer?

      • That's a good point. I mean, if I were designing it, I would make the tread thicker. But that would make these more expensive still, so probably they didn't do that.

        • That's a good point. I mean, if I were designing it, I would make the tread thicker. But that would make these more expensive still, so probably they didn't do that.

          There are limits to how deep you can make the tread before "squirm" becomes a problem.

      • Re:Tread Wear, not Puncture (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @03:03PM (#65590284) Journal

        I believe the thinking goes;

        "Of all tire failures, X% of them can be attributed to punctures or improper inflation (e.g. excessive sidewall stress or premature tread wear). Therefore, airless tires can reduce tire failures by approximately X%."

        So it's less about one specific set of tires lasting longer, it's about the *average* service life of the tires, and a bit of safety.
        =Smidge=

        • Possible, but I suspect that the effect will be quite small since it is X% times the reduction in life from under inflation. If also means that there is no longevity advantage at all for people who do maintain their tyres and I suspect that these are also the people who would be most likely to spend more money on new tyre technology. Indeed, I suspect this may be part of the problem: airless-tyres offer the most benefit to those least likely to care enough to spend more money on them.

        • Punctures through the tread are usually repairable. Punctures in the sidewall are not.

          The tread is still going to wear out and the tire will still need to be replaced. I'm not seeing much advantage here.

          • > Punctures through the tread are usually repairable.

            Sure. If they are not catastrophic (e.g. just a nail/screw and not something that causes a gash) and you catch them in time (e.g. not driving on a flat tire which will destroy the sidewalls).

            And if the tire can't lose air you don't even need to get the puncture fixed at all.
            =Smidge=

      • In all the driving I have done in the years I ones had to replace the tire because of a puncture.
        Big hole pretty close to the wall. And I was almost already driving on the rim by the moment I could safely stop on the 80KM/h road (it was empty within a minute)

      • Everytime I have replaced tyres it has been because the tread became too worn, not because they got a puncture.

        Lucky you. For me it's been 50/50. Usually I need to fully replace 1 tire (2 since you never do just one), every two wearouts due to a flat. I'm currently driving on a repaired tire.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        These new tires may last much longer

        Will they last longer? Everytime I have replaced tyres it has been because the tread became too worn, not because they got a puncture. Why will an uninflated tyre's tread last longer?

        As a former S15 Silvia owner, you can go through the tread on a set of tyres pretty effing quickly... An afternoon isn't difficult.

        We already have uninflated tyres, they're called run flats (well they can run uninflated) and have some serious drawbacks, not the least of which are how incredibly hard they are leading to a very harsh ride and that's as a person who revels in a hard riding sports car. A decent sidewall will smooth out a rough road and still maintain a good amount of feedback for the driver.

  • Yeah (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 14, 2025 @01:47PM (#65590126)

    Too bad about the highway noise.
    But there are tons of places that airless wheels/tires can do a lot of good, like mountain bikes, wheelbarrows, offroad fun vehicles like quads/dirtbikes/side-by-sides, low-speed municipal work vehicles, construction vehicles, farm vehicles, etc that aren't used at highway speeds.
    Heck even my baby's stroller has pneumatic tires.
    (To be fair, you can already buy airless tires for a lot of these things)
    I hope they eventually crack the nut that can lead to airless tires usable at highway speeds on passenger vehicles.

    • Forklifts and Scissor lifts already have these.
      • Yup, my wheelbarrow has one as well. There is a disadvantage though. If it is heavily loaded and you need to push it on a plank, an air Tyre dents a bit in, making it easier to hop on the plank. It is a lot less subtle with an airless Tyre. Cheers!

    • Re: Yeah (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday August 14, 2025 @02:20PM (#65590194) Homepage Journal

      MTBs are NOT a good place to use tweels, you absolutely need a pneumatic tire to get maximum grip. All of those other places are very applicable, though

      For my part I want them for a bus to RV conversion. They will have much longer lifespans than pneumatic because the sidewall is what fails on very old tires, and the sidewall on a tweel when there even is one is just there to keep crap out of the spokes. And there is enough engine noise (the vehicle in question has an 8.3 liter Cummins) that any additional is just irrelevant. It's also riding on air, so a slightly harder ride doesn't matter either.

    • I've been seeing more and more farm equipment with airless. Skid loaders are particularly well suited to them. Some smaller tractors. Though the bigger tractors are moving to rubberized treads/tracks rather than airless tires. Construction equipment is much the same outside of those big dirt scrapers. The ones that weren't already prone to metal tracks, anyway.

    • I work as a motorcycle designer, and these things are absolutely horrible for performance and safety. Unsprung weight affects lighter vehicles like motorcycles far more than cars, and they don't work well on vehicles that lean over because they don't absorb shock laterally very well. Also, the gaps trap mud and gravel on dirtbikes and ATV/UTV's; they can really bog them down.

  • Airless tires work better at below highway speeds (45mph / 72kph). The best market for airless tires is construction vehicles.

    • Fuck tires!

      I've never seen a quiet hovercraft. If you can generate lift without generating massive piles of noise, I'd agree with you.

  • Yes the maintenance thing is better. But even at low speeds on my tractor the do not grip nearly as well as inflated tires. I've run into trees many more times since switching to these things. Imagine what on an automobile would be like.....

  • Would work great against (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gabrieltss ( 64078 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @02:09PM (#65590170)
    Airless tiers would work great against "Spike strips". No more shredded tires on high speed chases.....
    • This is probably the exact reason it's being suppressed.

    • I've been thinking about this and what I came up with is barbs on the spikes. Once they penetrate the treadwall the whole strip can stick and fuck the whole wheel area all up. I've read that some of them are barbed but the pictures I've seen were involved more conical shapes. Still, perhaps some will be good for this already.

  • wood wouldn't (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @02:27PM (#65590216)

    Covered wagons had wooden wheels. That is the best choice, because it is a renewable resource.

  • Because Pneumatic Tires are Just Better (Score:3)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @02:43PM (#65590246) Homepage

    Some things can't currently be improved upon. The standard bicycle, for example, has been only minimally improved upon since the introduction of the Safety Bicycle in the 1880s-- and it works so well in part due to pneumatic tires.

    The article explains the problem that airless tires have:

    1. Shock absorption
    2. Tire weight
    3. Tire cost
    4. Heat buildup

    Flat tires are annoying... but they're the best of the problems.

    • Some things can't currently be improved upon. The standard bicycle, for example, has been only minimally improved upon since the introduction of the Safety Bicycle in the 1880s-- and it works so well in part due to pneumatic tires.

      The article explains the problem that airless tires have:

      I run tubeless tires on my MTB, with the sealant inside. Works great, punctures self-seal pretty quickly, requires annual maintenance though. I think they do have some level of self-sealing available on car tires now but I've never tried them.

      • I think they do have some level of self-sealing available on car tires now but I've never tried them.

        There's Slime, and then there's more hardcore compounds, like the stuff they put into military tires to seal bullet holes. Tire shops hate Slime, let alone anything thicker and more voluminous. Slime will seal nail punctures and the like. The thicker stuff will seal almost anything, but a) you will still need to add air in some cases, which is normally done with CTIS on relevant vehicles in the field, and b) it is a balance issue so it can only be done with large vehicles on large tires and at low speeds.

        • Yes, I'm aware of Slime, and yeah it makes a mess, just like the stuff in my MTB that I have to clean out annually. I was actually talking about self-sealing-tires from the factory, for passenger cars. Like these.

          https://www.michelinman.com/au... [michelinman.com]

          I suspect tire shops will hate those too, but like I say I have never tried them.

    • Tannus Airless road bike tires are just awesome. They're heavier, but I don't carry a pump or patch kit anymore and was running fairly heavy gatorskin tires before, so the extra weight nets out about even. Feels like a 110PSI inflation, maybe a little slower ride - wouldn't wanna race them - but not slow enough that I'm ever going back to pneumatic tires. The rubber isn't exactly solid, it's more like a very very dense closed-cell foam, so there's lots of air bubbles to create rebound energy that makes t

    • Everything sounds like it can't be improved on until someone comes up with an improved way.

      But really are you talking about the entire bicycle? If so, sorry but you're incredibly ignorant about bicycles. Even leaving aside technical innovations such as electric motors, gears (which themselves also had many technical improvements), brakes, etc, even the safety cycle itself had major innovations since its first introduction. It was a full decade before they developed raked forks.

      But bicycle tires are worlds a

  • Design issue (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @03:40PM (#65590352)
    When younger, I "did a donut" in the snow with my little car. Afterward, a wheel was rotating roughly, disallowing greater than 45 mph. After the snow melted, all was fine; I realized the small packing of snow in the wheel had thrown it out of balance. Whenever I hear about open, airless tires, I think about that. I don't know whether they will be manufactured as being open to the elements, but debris and snow would surely be a problem.

  • None of the problems tires have are to do with air or air pressure.
    - they require a lot of natural rubber (latex) which is a limited resource.
    - natural rubber degrades and can't be un-degraded. It's like rotten wood. You have to replace it eventually. Dry rot and wear is what makes most tires unusable.
    - They're really difficult to recycle into anything but dirty rubber chips.
    We haven't found a better material for tires in 150 years. They've added other polymers to the compounds to make them run longer or gr

    • they require a lot of natural rubber (latex) which is a limited resource.

      Correction, rubber is a renewable resource. Literally. It comes from trees.

      • It comes from one type of tree that grows only in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Vietnam at this point. The large Amazonian rubber plantations were killed off by blight. Blighters. Bugs and such.

    • None of the problems tires have are to do with air or air pressure.

      Go let all of the air out of your tires and try to drive somewhere. Let us know how it goes.

  • If the active suspension can react fast enough, the tire transmitting vibration won't matter.

  • I used to commute a long distance and I drove home (60 miles) with nails/screws in tires many times. One time I was very surprised that the debris I drove home with (you still get the flat message in the car, but you can drive "50 mph") was actually a pretty big hunk of metal.
  • SPIKE strips! LOL Police wouldn't be able to spike the tires to end a car chase.

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