Nothing is replacing the pneumatic tire any time soon. Many things have been tried and rejected.
Solid tires are a common proposal.
They existed before pneumatic ones and get brought up every few years as some new thing. There are some differences in materials, but they are really more or less the same in every iteration. They are worse than pneumatic tires in every way, except getting flats, and they never make any serious inroads. Solid tires exist on garden equipment and the really cheap wheelchairs meant for in-hospital use, but wherever ride quality is important and any surface except a smooth hard floor is expected, pneumatic tire it is.
The other commonly proposed solution is various mechanical dampening systems. Springs, shocks, etc.
Some of them are very pretty.
They also all suck in comparison to the pneumatic tire. They are much heavier and have terrible handling.
There are also more modern things, like the Tweel. It’s sort of a combination of a solid tire and spring wheel.
They exist. You can buy them. But, like solid tires, they are limited to garden equipment. You can get them to fit a power mower, but not a car. They can’t handle high speeds, and in snow and mud they clog up and become the equivalent of the wheel from Fred Flintstone’s car.
The efforts to reinvent the wheel are not going very well. There is a reason that expression exists.
All that said, flats, while not completely eradicated, have become a lot less common than even 20 years ago. You get an occasional nail or screw, but tires “just go flat” almost never. The tire compounds have improved, and the tires have become cheaper, so people can replace them more often.
Run-flat tires are also fairly common. They do lose air with a puncture, but don’t go completely flat. This is usually done with thicker sidewalls.
When the tire loses air, you can still drive, but with worse handling and lower speeds. Pretty much how you would with a solid tire.
No comments:
Post a Comment