<story><title>Michelin Rolls Out an Airless Tire That Will Be “Puncture-Proof”</title><url>https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27728995/michelin-airless-tire-uptis/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nimbius</author><text>speaking as an automotive mechanic for a chain of small midwest shops, this technology has existed for almost a century.  What the article should specify is that Michelin intends to offer a motor vehicle version of this technology, which I think is probably going to be disaster for a few reasons:&lt;p&gt;1.  weight. anything thats supposed to handle interstate speeds and offer comfort is going to be heavy as it will need to be durable. id be surprised if these tweels show up with the longevity of a standard all-weather radial.  Id be even more surprised if drivers dont pull into the service station for more esoteric repairs like CV joints, brakes or idler&amp;#x2F;pitman assembly changeouts as this is common in vehicles that upgrade to more rugged tires.&lt;p&gt;2.  partial failure.  Most people dont want to spend money on a new tire if its 40% worn and a hole or cut is in the tread.  Typically a bubblegum type or kevlar patch is applied for $30 to the tire, which keeps it rolling intil its worn enough to replace.  How do you repair a tweel thats received curb strike damage or a sharp object?&lt;p&gt;For those who have pointed out, yes, fork trucks and fork lifts commonly use solid tires, but thats largely due to how they work.  Many forklifts can hoist in excess of 40 tons, so it makes sense to have a tire that doesnt readily compress.  Its why big trucks have to have more tubeless tires for larger loads.  The plastic or rubber tires on forklifts also have a quick re-tread option.  The tires often dont even need to be removed, as they have more treads that can be created by pulling out zip-tie like spacers in the worn tread.  other models use a hot-iron type re-treader.  that being said, forklift tires are very heavy and so are the wheels, and neither last very long at full-speed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Michelin Rolls Out an Airless Tire That Will Be “Puncture-Proof”</title><url>https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27728995/michelin-airless-tire-uptis/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dsfyu404ed</author><text>I suspect these are going to be much more sensitive to overloading than normal tires since they&amp;#x27;re gonna be specifically matched to the vehicle weight (unlike a pneumatic tire which can carry far more than vehicle but is simply inflated to a specific pressure for NVH&amp;#x2F;handling) you can&amp;#x27;t just air them up by a few pounds.  You can&amp;#x27;t add more pressure to a non-pneumatic tire so it&amp;#x27;s simply going to deform more and generate more heat if you add more load.  There&amp;#x27;s no good way around that.&lt;p&gt;One of the nice things about a pneumatic tire is that you can air down if you need low ground pressure.  I guess that goes out the window too.&lt;p&gt;These will probably work really well in some use cases but barring some massive groundbreaking improvement I wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect to see these replacing conventional pneumatic tires over the next decade or two.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I&amp;#x27;m talking about these tires in the general case, not specifically as they exist on a Bolt.</text></comment>