Airless tires will arrive in 2024: another two years and they will be commercially available for cars on sale and on the aftermarket. After years of waiting and testing, they promise to give drivers a worry-free experience. Will it be true?
The automotive industry is on fire, and is sounding the charge with electric vehicles, driven by an urgent need for change. Advanced technologies in all fields, from emissions to performance through semi-autonomous driving algorithms, flex their muscles every day. One of the highly anticipated cornerstones for the cars of the future, however, has been here for years. He promises and never delivers: it's about the tyres, or as I like to say, "the tyres".
Well, apparently there we really are: the advent of this epochal transition is just two years away. 2024 will give us airless tires, which never get punctured.
2024, the airless era begins
It's difficult to reinvent the wheel, you'll tell me. And you're right. To the point that we have seen very few changes under our vehicles. One of these, the removal of the inner tube and the “tubeless” design, is now almost a century old. Since Charles Goodyear invented this solution and some giants (Michelin and Dunlop above all) have marketed it, a lot of water has passed, sorry: air under the bridge.
A few years ago Michelin started working on an airless solution. Uptis, the proprietary system of the French company, has paved the way for a completely different approach to tyres. An approach that no longer relies on air pressure to support the weight of the vehicle. And this, yes, would be a notable change.
How do “airless” tires work?
Uptis it is the first passenger car tire to feature an airless approach. It can be equipped with an aluminum wheel, and is made of a flexible supporting structure in glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP). It still has the normal treads we are used to seeing. However, its side wall is different and unique, as it is open. It's called airless for this very reason: you don't need air. There is rubber inside it too.
Airless tires therefore have the characteristic of being "puncture-proof". They can go over nails, glass, whatever. Less waste, goodbye to mountains of damaged tires disposed of in more or less legal ways. A solution here to stay, don't you think?
Two sizes slated for debut in 2024: 17-inch and 20-inch. And among the things we will obviously say goodbye to, there is also the checking of tire pressure at petrol stations.
