The tire maker has high expectations for the Tweel. The concept of a single-piece tire and wheel assembly is one that the company expects to spread to passenger cars and construction equipment and aircraft.

The Tweel offers a number of benefits beyond being impervious to nails in the road. The tread will last two to three times as long as current radial tires, Michelin says, and when it does wear thin, it can be retreaded.

For manufacturers, the Tweel offers an opportunity to reduce the number of parts, eliminating most of the 23 components of a typical new tire as well as the costly air-pressure monitors that will soon be required on new vehicles in the United States.

Manufacturers have devoted an increasing amount of attention to tires that allow motorists to continue driving, at a reduced speed, for at least 100 miles, or 160 kilometers after a puncture. Several such designs are available, providing peace of mind for travelers and cutting the need for spare tires. Michelin sells them under the Pax name.

The Tweel, mounted on a car, is a single unit, though it actually begins as an assembly of four pieces bonded together: the hub, a polyurethane spoke section, a "shear band" surrounding the spokes and the tread band - the rubber layer that wraps around the circumference and touches the pavement.

While the Tweel's hub functions as it would in a normal wheel - a rigid piece that attaches to the axle - the polyurethane spokes are flexible, to help absorb road impacts. The shear band surrounding the spokes effectively takes the place of the air pressure, distributing the load. The tread is similar in appearance to a conventional tire.

One shortcoming of a tire filled with air is that the pressure is distributed equally around the tire, both up and down as well as side to side. That property keeps the tire round, but it also means that raising the pressure to improve cornering - increasing lateral stiffness - also adds up-down stiffness, making the ride harsher.

With the Tweel's injection-molded spokes, those characteristics are no longer linked, holding the potential to improve handling response. The spokes can be engineered to give the Tweel five times as much lateral stiffness as pneumatic tires without losing ride comfort.

The Tweel is in its infancy - "version 1.0," Thompson said, and only one set of car Tweels exists. A test drive in a Tweel-equipped Audi A4 sedan on roads around Michelin's research center proved to be far less exotic than the construction method or appearance would suggest. The prototype Tweels are noisy, as Thompson warned they would be, because the spokes vibrate. (Pictures above.)

Almost everything else about the Tweel is undetermined at this early stage of development, from serious matters like cost to more frivolous questions like the possibilities of chrome-plating.

Other uses - military vehicles, for example - would come before automobiles, but Michelin's business projections accommodate the possibility that the Tweel may not be an overnight success. This would be nothing new for Michelin: The radial tire it invented in 1946 was not widely accepted in the United States until the 1970s.

 

hahaha i wouldnt drive with that ugly lookin thing on my car....although it is neat in a way to think that someone was that creative...

 

these are old.. but they are pretty sweet in my opinion.. i believe its michelin thats coming out with these airless tires.. best part is tire strips cant puncture it lol.. definately pimp though.. no more flats

 

i saw a video about these tires.........there pretty crazy

 

Yea somebody posted this a while back. Looks like a good invention but doesn't seem practical. How much would it cost and are you required to purchase special rims?

 

thing with those rims is you cant just replace the tire when it wears out...you gotta replace the whole package which can get into the thousands for all 4, for just regular non high performance tires. for the safety of not having a flat tire? just get a run flat. but these wont be in production for a while

 

this is old news..but good idea

 

And we still wonder how misinformation gets spread so easily. This basic info was in the first two paragraphs.

 

ditto.. they're already have these tires on some of the newer cars.

 

FUGLY

 

the tires are cut away to show how "run flat" tires work

 

Exactly! Its like Rosie Odonnel on an axle. Who the fk wants to see that?

 

yuup

 

Could someone photo shop to show the tire with all of it in silver....just wondering how it would look if they went that route,, the black does look ugly. How about a photoshop with them on the g??

 

would you really like a retreaded tire? i would never buy that. just purchase a new one. you see what happens to them all the time. thanks for being such a sweetheart about it