http://www.michelinman.com/difference/releases/pressrelease01102005a.html
mmmmmmmmmk
Interesting concept. I wonder what the “spokes” are made from. You’d think fatigue would be an issue with them in a car application since it’s really the deforming of the spokes that act like a conventional tire’s “cushiness”. I wonder what kind of life they would have, and how the heck would you monitor their life?
Why do I never get to work on projects like this?
Stick a steel rod in thier and fock up someones day :kekegay:
i think its pretty sweet i read about it in car and driver a while back.
those things are fuckin retarded. innovation isn’t always good especially when it would probably put a lot of people outta business. i bet the ride is terrible, people forget that tires is a big part of your suspension. Low pros handle good but ride like shit cause of the lack of cushion. these would be about the same. As a consumer i wouldn;t care to save money by getting those, i’d be killing good businesses and they look ugly as fuck.
The people that made carriages probably said the same thing about the “horseless carriage”. Damn Henry Ford and his inventions!!! And don’t get me started on the person that invented the small pox vaccine. Poor coffin makers… 
:smartass:
i’d be scared to hit a turn at speed w/ those things. looks lik they’d fold in half. and ya, they r ugly. but i guess its cool.
they said they can change the stiffness of the rods to compensate for ride quality or performance, just like the tires we have today.
Innovation is always a good thing, even if it is stupid. It pushes people to think about other/better ways to do things. If noone took the chance we would all be riding horses around and not driving the cars we now have.
And how would these tires kill business, it’s still a consumable product just like the tires we currently use?
I agree they look ugly as fuck, but that can all be changed. I like the idea.
No more blowouts or flats eliminates the need for people to purchase a tire except when it wears. NOT only will tire manufactures go down but reatilers, tire machine makers, WHEEL companies, wheel retailers etc etc… Wheels are such a big thing in out society i couldn’t see this comming about for a long long time. How about how this aplication would affect cars with lots of HP…oh i forgot they want us all to be driving battery operated junk that has about 40 hp.
i actaully saw a news segment on them, they said the road noise was a big problem with these. they mentioned how it would get rid of piles of used tires and would eliminate the need for tire recyclers (loss of more jobs). All those Fields with the A-turf need that recycled tire as the base for the field surface.
wow barring technology and safety for the sake of tire recycling jobs… :rolleyes:
you’re not gonna wake up one day and magically everyone has these things appear on their cars you’ll be dead before this stuff would even be standard equipment
other way around it was developed as a USE for the recycled tires not developed and then they went “well golly gee where the hell we gonna get all that rubber to use as a base” they were looking for a place to put all the shit
well people like to bitch about how they can’t find work and cutting more jobs, regarless of how insignificant you think they are, would have some effect.
all i’m saying is that by the time it would put them out of jobs the people working those jobs will have retired and they just wouldnt have replaced them…you’re not firing people, did hybrid cars put gas station employees out of business (since we’ve had hybrid cars for 15 years now)
how many hybrid cars are on the road? Not enough to effect that. What else happend in the last 15 years to counter act that thou. The surge of truck and SUV sales aka gas guzzlers.
you’er getting my point but not applying it, take it one step further: “how many of these tires will you see on the road” michilin and other companies won’t drop their entire product line just to make these one type of tire
so like hybrid cars it will enter the market slow, almost at a turtle pace. Maybe it eventually eliminate the tire and maybe it becomes a bust… They made it sound way more extreme on the Today show, like tires were just gonna be gone.
no, their markets right now are the heavy industry and areas where pnumadic tires that can/or do blowout would be beneficial.
they do wear out they’re not a tire that never wears the only difference between this setup and a standard tire is lack of air and it’s perma-mounted to the wheel. they’ll be VERY expensive to start but what i gathered from everything it’s mor a heavy industry thing they can sustain higher pressures than pnumadic tires and are lighter than solid tires
edit: if you read that article it says heavy industry, military use, and mobility systems…they were experimenting with passanger cars
what they need to do is get that to mount to a standard wheel (or even a modified wheel) i’d love to have the responsiveness of that tire
i’ll stick with my kumho’s