Car & Driver

Friday, April 22, 2005

Here is the technology that michelin is developing. Its called the tweel. Contraction of the words tire and wheel. It looks damn bloody cool i think. Thats a pretty sexy tread pattern too!

heres the working prototype running on an A4. Imagine my car could be an everyday stair climber man....although thinking bout it, not only could they potentially make the car waay lighter, but also wit low profile wheels, they could adjust the dampning of the tire struts to provide a less harsh ride such as the one im experiencing now wit my low profile tires

maaan as soon as this come out and if i have a car by then...im definitely getting a set...just because of the shock factor. Imagine rolling on a set of these in singapore! youll get on every freakin car magazine just cos of them man!

here is the science...so theres the deformable wheel, and your flexible spokes which combine to be a very good damper in my opinion. Depending on the composition of the rubber, you could tweak it to be real hard or real soft...the tread concerns me because i would think if the tread band is thin, michelin might get lots of money from pple having to change it really often. Not so sure how this would handle a hard turn. thats alot of shear force right there man. In terms of flat spotting on the tire, which would make a hell of a lot of noise and a bad ride, its apparantly not much more than 5% differnce from conventional tires. speed loss due to increased friction is also real small at 5%, and the most important factor is gas efficiency. Wit softer tires and more surface area in contact wit the road, you need more gas to push off and stuff. that apparantly is not a factor either...very interesting stuff. I WANT!

¶ 8:09 PM

Rhinoboy said...
aiyah school sucks la fail all already so no diff. I dunno bout jap sites dude....you gotta ask lionel for that. Just go to the 240 sites online la...im sure lots of pple will recommend good places. In terms of like gauges and shit, there are some pretty nice ones these days...just have to look around hard enuf