wooosa wooosa

 

It's interesting that you brought this up. When I was a fleet manager (before I retired) we used to see these tires at some of the conferences we attended. We talked to them about these and the issue you brought up is one of the stumbling blocks the manufactures are faced with. Kinda tough for them to promote these for reasons like that.

 

Well. They look interesting!
As to the cop chase thing, well, the police have other means to disable cars too these days, short of shooting that is. Someday I'm sure there will be an option in all our black boxes for the computer to be shut down externally from a cop car and their laptop. Or perhaps something will let them "put on the brakes".
It cannot be that far into the future. I mean, they have access to huge data bases, and our boxes all have info in them collected at the point of inspection. Why not up the ante a bit if you are an auto black box manufacturer and reach out to law enforcement. Heck if I can think of it, what can they REALLY be thinking of?
Technology WILL march on,even If it gives the bad guys some advantage, they wont have it for long.
Still, it all makes me nervous.
I'm going to go to the Michelin site and check on these tires.

 

from what i remember they are testing such a device maybe they are even perfecting it they have been working on it for about five years

 

Has anyone seen these or heard any more about them. I think they are ugly holding still but look neat while rolling, I don't know if I like them or not! I wonder if the side wall was cut away to show the design or if thats how they are going to be.


These tires are airless and are scheduled to be out on the market very soon.
The bad news for law enforcement is that spike strips will not work on these tires.
This is what great R&D will do, and just think of the impact on existing technology:
a. no more air valves
b. no more air compressors at gas stations
c. no more repair kits

These are actual pictures taken in the South Carolina plant of Michelin.
It will be a while before they are available to the automotive industry

 

I saw a few papers and reports about these tires in either late '05 or early '06, a new design to eliminate flats, better fuel economy, etc, I have only seen them as you have pictured and have no idea if there might be a sidewall included to make the new design more visually appealing...I would hope so !!!

 

I would think that a sidewall would help stiffen the tire for better performance.

 

DUDE!! Those are friggin' sweet!!

I hope I have those if coppers ever have to use a spike strip on me

No, but seriously, those would be cool to have. It looks like it would make the ride 10 times smoother because of the way they act like springs going over that curb.

Wonder how much they'll cost?

 

Old news, someone posted about these last week and several months ago.

 

Those look very neat, actually. I wonder how they fare in anything but dry conditions? I'm not sure I want a tire with that much give when I'm dealing with soft snow.