The Driving Woman

Until I got into the car biz, I thought about tires as a necessary accessory that needed to be changed, rotated or put out to pasture. A decade later I'm thinking differently. Last  week I went to the jungles of Bahia, Brazil to see how Michelin's rubber trees are individually scraped for their sap and visited the plant where rubber is condensed into blocks to be shipped to Michelin’s plants in South Carolina.  What truly astounded me was that it takes ONE YEAR for a rubber tree to create 5 kilos of the white sap, which equals enough rubber for a tire of a small car!  Tires have taken on a whole new meaning for me.

In the course of a conversation with Lynn Mann, the spokesperson for Michelin, North America, she told me about the Tweel, the airless tire that is less than a couple of years from market for front loaders like Caterpillars and ten years away for passenger cars.

So, what's a Tweel?  A combined tire and wheel that could never go flat because it contains no air. Michelin describes the Tweel as a single non-pneumatic solution (airless) instead of the traditional tire and wheel combination, made up of a rubber tread bonded to the hub by flexible spokes. The flexible spokes are fused with a deformable wheel that absorbs shocks and rebounds. (Check out the pictures—they tell the best story!)

"The cool thing is the Tweel is maintenance free. It's a single unit you can literally buy off the shelf and bolt it on,” Lynn explained.
 
Besides the fact that puncture isn't even in the cards, Michelin claims that the tread will last two to three times as long as radial tires. Plus, when it starts to show wear it can be retreaded. For instance, you could resurface with a summer compound during the hot months and a winter compound, during the cold months. If you factor in less material (for manufacturers that could eliminate many of the 23 components that go into a new tire) and installation fees, that makes the Tweel a very eco-conscious product. The cost…to be determined.

Running on empty just took on a whole new meaning.