Why Cars Still Don't Have Airless Tires, Yet (jalopnik.com)
- Reference: 0178675770
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/08/14/1733234/why-cars-still-dont-have-airless-tires-yet
- Source link: https://www.jalopnik.com/1922000/why-cars-dont-have-airless-tires/
[1] https://www.jalopnik.com/1922000/why-cars-dont-have-airless-tires/
Yeah (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Forklifts and Scissor lifts already have these.
Re: Yeah (Score:3)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Construction Vehicles (Score:2)
Airless tires work better at below highway speeds (45mph / 72kph). The best market for airless tires is construction vehicles.
We Need Hovercraft. (Score:1)
Fuck tires!
Re: (Score:2)
> 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.
I have airless tires on my Craftsman lawn tractor (Score:2)
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.....
Re: I have airless tires on my Craftsman lawn trac (Score:3)
It won't matter for heavy trucks (unless they are going off road) and buses. They already run high pressures and the high mileage tires also have hard compounds.
It's a big drawback for passenger cars.
Would work great against (Score:4, Interesting)
Airless tiers would work great against "Spike strips". No more shredded tires on high speed chases.....
Re: (Score:1)
This is probably the exact reason it's being suppressed.
Re: (Score:2)
Run flats are a thing already anyway.
wood wouldn't (Score:3)
Covered wagons had wooden wheels. That is the best choice, because it is a renewable resource.
Re:wood wouldn't (Score:5, Funny)
I really really wood knot want to corner on wooden wheels. They'd turn to Ash and would be a Birch to fix.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, technically, rubber *is* a sort of wood...
Because Pneumatic Tires are Just Better (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
> 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.
Re: (Score:1)
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
Design issue (Score:3)
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.
Actual problem with tires (Score:2)
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
Add higher speed active suspension (Score:2)
If the active suspension can react fast enough, the tire transmitting vibration won't matter.
This oil change could have been an email. (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
(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.)
Re:This oil change could have been an email. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
And EDIT -- Yes, I get these wheels are hub-less (in Michelin's terms), but that's not what your aunt was dealing with.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: This oil change could have been an email. (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe when she was younger? My sister can change tires on her Grand Cherokee. She once called me and asked where the best place to get a tire replaced was, she had put the donut tire on already.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you not understand this isn't about fitting a spare tire -- it's about replacing the rubber over a wheel. You sister isn't doing that. I promise you that.
Re: This oil change could have been an email. (Score:2, Funny)
You have no idea the things his sister can do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> Please shut the fuck up.
[1]Oh shut up you fuckstick. [slashdot.org]
[2]Shut up you moron. [slashdot.org]
[3]Shut the fuck up. [slashdot.org]
[4]You're a moron. [slashdot.org]
[5]Shut up you fucking moron. [slashdot.org]
[6]shut up you fucking moron. [slashdot.org]
Seriously, why are you even here? I gave up after 5 pages of the same useless crap as above. Literally not even a single attempt at a comment that wasn't an obvious troll.
[7]Ah, the whore had to jump in. Don't you have anything better to do with your time? [slashdot.org]
That one at least gave a mild chuckle, the exhibited lack of self-awareness was a bit humorous.
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[3] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23762094&cid=65570724
[4] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23760404&cid=65565862
[5] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23750708&cid=65541868
[6] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23743412&cid=65522820
[7] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20631843&cid=62191197
Re: (Score:3)
Mental illness is real.
Tread Wear, not Puncture (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
> 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:2)
Having had mud tires on a pickup before I know that you can run a pretty thick tire before it's a real problem.
Re: (Score:2)
The ability of the tread blocks to deform might even be an advantage off road. Probably won't help with pumping water on the street though.
Re:Tread Wear, not Puncture (Score:4, Insightful)
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=
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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)