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Bridgeton car parts supplier tests in tires that never break, potentially smoothing the track for more driving vehicles.
The Japanese company, which refers to French Michelin to be the largest tire supplier in the world, has developed an airless version that says it can support a 1 tonne of driving at 60km per hour, great progress over solid tire capabilities a decade ago.
New computer structures and materials have led to significant innovations to improve their performance at higher speeds and weights, making them candidates to replace pneumatic tires just as vehicles without drivers put on a safety premium and there is no delay.
But the huge performance and the advantages of pneumatic tire costs make them extremely difficult to relocate.
The new tires have been tried on shuttle -buses and tourist vehicles, as Japan is trying to bring autonomous driving to rural communities to deal with the lack of drivers and mechanics. Innovation is also considered a potential differentiator amid increased Chinese and Indian competition.
“When we eventually reach an autonomous ride, there will be great value in avoiding vehicles that stop deep in the driver -free mountains for shooting tire,” said Masaki Otta, manager of the new Bridgeton mobility business development.
Computer simulations have helped create tires with a voice structure surrounded by a rubber pattern, where articles can bounce and bend at higher speeds and weights without becoming fuel consumption, smooth driving and safety compared to previous tires without air.
Tires can mean lower maintenance costs and reduced risk of responsibility from autonomous driving accidents caused by punctures.
But experts are afraid of design, with production costing several times more than pumped tires, you may struggle to carve the niche. Bridgestone also overturned the usual logic of innovation, targeting low -performance vehicles for the mass market, rather than testing high -performance products.
Replacing all pneumatic tires with wireless is “a utopia that will cost too much,” said Florent Menegax, Michelin’s chief executive. The company has been working on air -free tires for 20 years and has already put its own version, called Tweel, on smaller vehicles such as lawns in the United States.
“Going from a lawn in a car, driving at 50 km per hour, to represent other problems,” he said. They include bending sound, the risk of stones flying outside spokesmen and maintaining high speed and weight performance over time, analysts say.
Michelin has carried out its tires for puncture firing, wireless tires of small vans for DHL and La Poste delivery groups, but the rubber and aluminum wheels remain in the prototype phase.
Menegax said Michelin is not “prepared from an industrial point of view” to take it further, even though logistics groups are “very happy”.
Bridgeton hopes to assess customer readiness to pay for air -free tires through demonstrations, such as a self -driving six -seater in the mountainous area of the city of Higashiomi, in which more than half of the 309 residents are older.
“We honestly haven’t reached a clear vision of how much this business will do and what kind of market it will be,” Otta said. “But we don’t wait to find out.”
An impetus for the biggest current teammates is attractive. Their business model is under threat of cheaper Chinese and Indian competition, as tires have become commodized and they lose about 5 % per year, according to a survey by the tire industry, specialist consulting services.
Instead, tire suppliers want to expand to services. Customers will return regularly to re-read the air-free tires-expects to last 10 years versus three to five for pneumatic tires.
“I still do not know if they will work in terms of delivering all the technical requirements of life expectancy, fuel economy and the price the world needs,” said David Shaw, chief executive of the tire industry research.
But success was more likely than not, he added, because “pneumatic tires are pain”.
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