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Sunday, June 19, 2022

Airless Car Tires

Useful, how soon?   A future shift in the history of automotive?  Goodyear.

Could flat tyres soon be a thing of the past?

By Russell Hotten, Business reporter, BBC News

The sight of a car limping along on a near-flat tyre, or a roadside wheel change are still common.

So is the expense of replacing tyres that have worn out prematurely, perhaps because the driver may not have been checking the pressure as regularly as they should.

Sometimes it's difficult not to feel tyres are a car's weak link. But is this about to change? Is it the end of the black rubber air-filled doughnut first used on vehicles in the 1890s - a product designed to be indestructible, and therefore not easy to recycle?

On a test track in Luxembourg, a Tesla Model 3 is twisting through tight corners, accelerating rapidly, and doing emergency stops. Standard stuff. What's remarkable, though, is the car is sitting on four airless tyres - made by Goodyear, the US manufacturer.

Special plastic spokes, support a thin, reinforced rubber tread. The spokes flex and contort as the car goes through its paces.  .... ' 

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