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The Bridgetone car supplier is testing advances in tires that never pierce, potentially softening the path to more self-driving vehicles.
The Japanese company, which comes with Michelin, France to be the world’s largest tire supplier, has developed an airless version that says it can support a 1-tone vehicle by driving at 60 km per hour, a great progress on solid tire skills a decade ago.
The new computer -activated structures and materials have led to significant innovation to improve their performance at speed and higher weights, making them contenders to replace pneumatic tires just as driverless vehicles are setting a premium for safety and without stops.
But the high performance of pneumatic tires and cost advantages make them extremely difficult to relocate.
New tires are being dissolved on ship buses and tourist vehicles, as Japan seeks to bring autonomous driving to rural communities to address drivers and mechanics deficiencies. The innovation is also seen as a possible differentiation between the growing Chinese and Indian competition.
“When we eventually go to autonomous driving, it will have great value to avoid vehicles that stop deep into the mountains without a driver due to an exploded rubber,” said Masaki Ota, a new Bridgestone mobility business manager.
Computer simulations have helped create tires with a spoken structure wrapped in a rubber violation, with noises able to jump and bend at a speed and higher weight without becoming a delay of fuel consumption, a quiet journey and safety compared to previous airless tires.
Tires can mean lower maintenance costs and reduce the risk of responsibility from autonomous management accidents caused by puncture.
But experts are afraid that the model, costs me several times that of pumped tires, can fight to carve a niche. Bridgetone has also reversed the usual innovation logic, first aiming at low -performance vehicles for the mass market, rather than testing products in high -performance races.
Replacing all pneumatic tires with those without air is “a utopia that will cost a lot,” said Florent Menegaux, chief executive of Michelin. The company has worked in air -free tires for 20 years and had already set its version, called Tweel, in smaller vehicles like Lawnmowers in SH.BA
“To go from a lawn to a car, to drive at 50 km per hour, presents other problems,” he said. They include a bold sound, the risk of stones flying out of noise, and maintaining high -weight performance over time over time, analysts said.
Michelin has executed evidence of his proven, boxing -free tires, airless ups in small vans for DHL and La Postet distribution groups, but the rubber and aluminum wheels remain in a prototype phase.
Menegaux said Michelin was not “ready from an industrial perspective” to get it further, despite the logistical groups being “very happy”.
Bridgetone hopes to appreciate the client’s willingness to pay airless tires through demonstrations, such as a six-country self-driving car in a mountainous area of the city of Higashiomi in which more than half of 309 people are elderly.
“We have sincerely not achieved a clear vision of how much this business will do and what kind of market will be,” Ota said. “But we’re not waiting to discover it.”
Promoting the main task task is compelling. Their business model is under threat from the cheapest Chinese and Indian competition after the tires have become comfortable, and they are losing about 5 percent a year of their overall volume, according to the search for the tire industry, a specialized consultancy.
Instead, tire suppliers want to expand to services. Customers would return regularly to re-read air-free tires-expected to last 10 years against three to five for pneumatic tires.
“I still do not know if they will work on providing all the technical requirements of longevity, fuel economy and the price the world needs,” said David Shaw, chief of tire industry research.
But success was more likely than not, he added, because “pneumatic tires are a pain.”
