The wooden tyre was the best in my old days.

How expensive are they? YES

They keep trying to get a balance between deformation and shock absorption -- between "too soft and gets bent out of shape easily" and "too firm and gives you a bumpy ride"

Criminals with cars:

"It is ready for production and commercial use" They have kept saying this for the past 20 years!!!

They’re widely used on heavy construction equipment, lawn mowers, and landfill machinery. Just not cars. They’re also really expensive, that’s why they’re not widely used.

The airless tire has only been around for 30 years... but it's almost ready...lmao

Forget the cost, these things are LOUD! The road noise you experience with these on is close to if not as loud as some exhausts

A big problem is the tread. A lot of tires need to be replaced because the tread wears out. Most people see these and think they would never had to replace a tire again, but because of the tread they will end up replacing a lot of tires anyway. Because the airless tires use more material they will cost more and could generate even more waste/pollution.

Airless basketballs, airless tires, next up: airless air

If they aren't lying and production costs are actually slightly higher by like $4. It's only because the engineers had to make a new model. Once the model is made it's just injected again. So the price increase is so small it wouldn't matter and it would definitely not affect the market value. However they say that so they can charge you a lot more

Michelin: we rolling out airless tires boys German TÜV: hold my beer, I'm about to ruin everyone's hopes and dreams

"Looks like Michelan addressed most of the issues, and they'll soon be on the market." Let me guess; the issue they _didn't_ address was the price.

We don't need an airless tyre we need airless politicians

The cops wont be able to stop criminals with these tires

Super! One less thing to worry about when driving!

Definitely a head ache for police when chasing criminals.

Did they solve the major issue of falling APART at high speeds 😮😮😮

They don’t realize that having airless tires will not stop the pollution tires have tread on them and they ware out regardless if there is air or not we either retread the tires until they can’t anymore and throw them out or simply not retread them like most people do and still throw them out just making a very valid point.

They make these for commercial lawn mowers and they are great and designed to last alot longer. My biggest concern after using them for a while would definitely be how smooth the ride and if the ridges that make the tire airless get damaged it can ruin the whole tire. They mower ones are also really expensive. Can only imagine how much ones for a car would cost.

Dont forget about load distribution, air pneumatic tyres distribute the load along the entire wheel with the pressurized air while the airless tyre would trasfer it directly. This would greatly reduce the lifespan of the wheel itself.

The most important problems to be solved when engineering tires is safety, handling, cost, ability to handle inclement weather and rough terrain, and longevity. Flats are not a serious problem and it was solved a 100 years ago - you carry a spare. I have been driving for over 50 years and won't buy a vehicle that doesn't have a spare. I think I have had maybe 4 flats, mostly when I was young. So I get a flat maybe once every 13-15 years, change the tire, and off I go.

These are already used on commercial zero turn mowers. They're a bit more expensive but can pay for themselves if you have trouble with flat tires, so you aren't paying guys to do nothing while a regular tire gets fixed.

These have been around for over 10 years and are very common on lawn mowers skid loaders etc

So stabbing my neighbours tyre will soon be completely pointless!

Most important reason… tire manufacturers will lose money from tire replacements

Winter months would be brutal, ice and snow would pack those openings.

Airless tires have been widely used on equipment for decades. This new type has been around for a few years now and companies such as ExMark sell officially supported aftermarket wheels known as Tweels. There's a couple landscapers that come into my job that run them Here's the known drawbacks: -Simply: cost Tweels and other airless wheels don't come as a tire, they are manufactured right onto a special rim to increase strength. This makes Tweels notably more expensive on tires that are already needlessly expensive. A pair of lawn tractor or mower tires will cost you around 4-500 dollars at a dealer. A pair of Tweels? Try 1500 as a start, mostly because you're buying the rim too. -weight and abuse capacity Pneumatic tires are very very good at dealing with short bursts of overpressure and shocks, as stated in the video. You can overload and overpressure a pneumatic tire and it will still work just fine because of how overbuilt they are. Can't do that with a Tweel. Too much shock will break the spokes at the top or bottom out on the bottom with zero shock absorbsion. We have a regular customer who runs Tweels on some Deere zeroturns and their smallest operator is the size of a moon. We have a pallet of broken Tweels just from this one company. It stays behind the dealer and slowly gets added to every six months before being sent off to be recycled. This also translates to lateral motion. Lateral abuse isn't an issue on equipment typically, but it is on OTR vehicles such as cars and trucks. Tweels don't handle it well and break spokes -repairability So you poke a hole in your lawnmower tire. Throw a tube in there, send it back out. Break the second tube? Just retube it. Easy. Tire tread wears out or dryrots? *Then* buy a new tire. You can poke a new hole in that tire once a week, throw a cheap tube in it, and keep going. Now you can't exactly just keep tubing a car tire, but you can patch it. If you break a spoke on a Tweel though, that's it, it's completely screwed. Better go get your checkbook cause you're about to spend two grand on a new rim and tire.

I had these on my John Deere mower Since 2015 and I wouldn’t put them on my car until they deal with the shock absorption issue. But they are excellent for landscaping

I just see an issue with snow or water getting in the middle and driving in those conditions can alter the way the tire flexes. As well as driving fast and turning. Without a sidewall that’s filled with air, that may be a hazard in those scenarios

Back in my day we use cans for tires

If they are reasonable price, I will buy ‘em. So cool!

Balance is a problem if mud gets in the open sidewall.

Because the constant flexing will wear out the rubber until it cracks/snaps and rocks and other debris will get in between and rip them to pieces.😅

If you drive fast and turn fast the tire rips

They will make it much harder to stop criminals during high speed chases.

"you can't get a flat tire with these tires but you can't go over 50mph without life threatening consequence"😂

Oldsmobile in the 70's had a composite rim instead of steel, which heat and bumps deformed and cracked them creating an actual leak on the tubeless tire..it was an item ahead of it's time

I don’t know much about the concept but I do believe it would save a lot of lives if we could use airless tires for the steer axle on semi trucks.

Had the airless tires on the zero turn mowers when I worked for this landscaping company.. they were the greatest thing ever made it very easy to hop curbs

Last time Michelin tried to reinvent the wheel with their PAX tire system on the Honda Odyssey it resulted in lots of angry customers, extremely limited availability, high replacement costs, poor wear and performance, lawsuits, and finally a regular tire option.

Pipe dream. There’s no way in hell that design will last 85,000 miles

I’m waiting a few years before I adopt. See how many crashes happen first. Michelin likes to release shit without proper testing lol

I will tell you the main reason why this concept was scrapped by most companies. Did you know, that if a normal tire has less air than recommended, that the tire is more likely to explode? You know why? Because the outer walls start bending more, which causes them to heat up and become quite fragile. In theese type of airless tires, what do you see? Theese lamelles are achieve that same effect. They heat up rapidly and become fragile. If not during your drive, they will break due to the changes in high and low temperature over time. Hancook stated that they will have a life span of at most 2 years due to that, disregarding the wear on them due to friction. What we need is higher longgevity, not some BS like this. You can repair holes from nails (which are rare in the first place).

Another bad thing about it is that you can't put weight on it so you can't pull trailers

A tire with air not only would be cheaper to manufacture, but it would offer superior performance. I wonder if Michelin might want to explore that avenue.

To solve or partially address airless tire defects, you can simply apportion some sections of the tire to contain air. This would reduce some problems easily.

Also I'm pretty sure you have to replace the whole wheel and tire assembly not just the rubber so you'd end up making more waste and that's part of why they're so expensive

So when it comes time for a new tire you have to buy an entire wheel

Only useful as an emergency spare. Cannot be used as a touring or performance tyre. Gas milage will also decrease, rolling resistance looks to probably be much higher. Best to be used in poor street quality situations or as an emergency spare, or on an offroad or construction vehicles.

The whole point, which is to reduce waste rubber, isn't achievable this way. Because eventually the tyre profile will run flat anyway, whether the tyre punctures or not, which doesn't happen very often anyway. So by using the extra material used in the airless tyre you will, in the end, still produce more waste than with the conventional tyres.

In Michigan where our roads suck, I could really use these

I have these Michelin tires on my lawn mowers. For a pair of 20” tires it’s $1,100 and for my 24” tires, they’re $750 each so $1,500 for a pair. They’re good for mowers but not sure how well they’ll be on a car.

I’ll buy a set after them run them in NASCAR.

They also don’t handle nearly as well. They can’t hold up to cornering as well because they don’t have the side wall of a regular tire.

Less rubber ,more to recycle. Less price say .100. 00 per tire. Means you can clean up America. Thank you, so much for doing your part. ❤❤❤❤❤❤

More rolling resistance too I would imagine, at least based off the ones in the video. That means you’ll burn through fuel quicker than normal because of the extra drag.

In local old news paper archives it use to be a competition of air tires vs all rubber. Seeing how my shopping cart works I see why air tires won. It’s just too noisy the rubber tires. These look like it can be different though .

They are designed for a specific mass of vehicle. If you are carrying more load, you can't just put more air in like a pneumatic tyre.

These haven’t been shown to be better in many of the ways that matter like efficient rolling resistance (They tend to add rolling resistance, although doing so while adding traction by increasing the contact point space between the wheel and the road / ground surface, sort of acting like a tank tread) Because they obviously don’t have air inside them and traditional tire sidewalls that allow for air pressure to push against said sidewalls to add strength, causing a lack of structural and efficient circularity rigidity to the tire. These tire / wheel systems would likely be good in zero or low atmospheric conditions with environments of lesser gravity, like the Moon and Mars, where the tread deforming could add traction and allow it to deform over rocks and other potential debris and obstacles. Unlike the solid metal wheels on current rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance, which have been shown to rip off sections that are stress hardened over time and then made hard and brittle after time of ware and tear, as well as cycles of temperature extremes going in and outside of direct sunlight. Whereas, these tires could possibly retain their pliability. Granted, they would have to be made out of a substance that remains “rubbery” at the high and low temperature extremes experienced on the surface of the Moon and Mars, when traditional sunset would place them in or out of direct hot sunlight and very cold shadow (causing extreme variability in temperatures) and since having air pressure in tires surrounded by little to no atmosphere, is basically impossible due to little to no atmospheric pressure pushing against it, and causing for unintended expansion of the tire pressure in standard tires makes them unfit for these off Earth applications. It could possibly also allow for the regolith to pass through the connection struts of the tire, possibly allowing for a paddling effect in deep and loose sandy regolith. Possibly even utilizing variable pockets of air in bladders in the support strut structure of the tire that can be adjusted by removing or adding air in these struts to add a circular rigidity under certain circumstances and conditions, allowing for variable deformity of the tires for various conditions. There is still a lot to study and engineer / iteratively redesign and update with these, especially to use them in space, on the surface of the Moon or Mars and hopefully on Earth as well, despite those environments having drastically different engineering requirements and challenges.

Just to give you an idea of price: A Air less tire for an a ATV/UTV start at $799 each..

I first saw these over 30 years ago. I suspect that the design was purchased by a major tyre manufacturer and shelved for obvious reasons.

You can get more cushioning by using smaller rims. No one needs 20in. 13 to 16in does the job fine.

In conclusion, we haven't invented anything yet.

I've seen these on construction vehicles like front end loaders and small cranes. The fiber spokes were alot thicker and instead of one set radiating out, they had a few that would criss-cross each other. It makes sense to use such tires for these environments. I saw in the construction zones lots of debri like nails what would puncture a tire.

Surely the airless tyres would pick up debris from the road. Such as stones and small rocks. Anything thats on the road. in the gaps. .

We'll say goodbye to drift with this one.

Well now it will be difficult to catch thieves or fugitives running on car....

One things hasn't changed over the century is tyre design, now it is time to do that.

I was literally thinking about making a tyre exactly like this yesterday

Honestly the main resion is that u change a tire more from lose of tire grips instead of punchers.. fix that first please and tks🙏 😅

Next the retail space will invent the cashless wallet and invisible best friend which comes standard with an invisible vacation.

I saw some of these on a zero turn yesterday at a garden center. I remember seeing these as a concept years ago and had no idea they started being produced. I thought it was neat to see them in person for a real use case and not just a staged display

🙂‍↔️ Shock absorption should be left the the suspension, not the tires. If your tires are taking the hit then they’re not inflated properly which is also bad for them or your shock absorbers is leaking like in most old cars.

What about shtt accumulation every 2nd day between those gaps making it rock hard

Why we dont use airless tires? Namely due to the fact that airless tires will absolutely destroy fuel economy. The 25 mile per gallon vehicle now gets only 12 miles per gallon. Unless said tires are made more solid. Then you'll feel every bump in the road, and if you drive where I do, you might get a free spinal realignment. No thanks.

Plus, in the event of a major chase, police wouldn't be able to use their spike strips to safely stop the vehicle. They would have to resort to other, potentially more dangerous, methods to stop the vehicle, such as a pit maneuver.

At work we have a set on a 9000 pound Gradall. They were about 15000 dollars each. A regular air up tire of the same size is a little less than 1000 dollars each. A foam filled tire is about 3000 dollars each.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

These haven’t been rolled out because Michelin bought the patent years ago and sat on it. The design is too long lasting, so Michelin needed time to reduce product lifetime. In other words, they’re rolling out a crappier design for profit.

French postal services have been testing them on their cars in collaboration with Michelin.

Perfect example of reinventing the wheel.

When tires where invented they were built to last forever. Company said well we need to make them so they can fall apart and we can sale more! Greed runs everything in this world!! True story

Sooo instead of replacing the tyre, i need a new wheel also?

This actually his best put together response yet

Back in my days the wheel wasn't a thing. Our foots were our wheels!

Getting away from the police is getting better 😂

I guess the police spike strip isnt going to work on these tires

I remember seeing an early variation of this in 1999 (im getting old). I've always thought about since, especially now that I'm an adult and have to deal with flat tires.

Having to buy the rim with the tire will be its most difficult hurdle.

Tires companies make so much money on the tires we have already. These will never be released to the public even after they fix the issues.

Some bank robbers gonna use that to counter spike strips

You gotta remember too, car chases would be difficult since even if they lay the spikes or shoot the tires, theyll keep goim

They addressed MOST of the problems

What about mud, gravel, and snow inside the chambers. Seems like tire you would put on your pavement princess down south. Not sure they will catch on everywhere.

I put one on my kids e-scooter, nice to not worry about another flat tire on it, but there is a noticeable difference in ride quality, not as dramatic as say the difference between skates with metal wheels and skates with rubber wheels but kinda similar.

Tirelessly looking forward!!! 😊

This is a great idea!!!

1) price is not affordable 2) cant control tire with psi , which you can do in a default tires 3) probably really loud on the highway 4) if broken, cant repair

If I never have to change them out and they cost less than $1K per tire, then I'm all in. Better than paying $350 per tire everytime I need to get my tires changed.