Reinventing the Wheel

bob zee sent in this link about reinventing the wheel, err, tweel, err, whatever. Wheels are an interesting challenge in engineering design: they need to be hard to be durable, soft for a smooth ride, grippy to grab the road, but smooth to reduce rolling resistance, flexible to absorb shocks, yet stiff to reduce heat build-up, and so on. Rubber tires are a relatively recent invention.

Comments

Re:Wrong Direction?

[DeathFlame]

So they improved it in two ways: It won't go flat. and you get more traction (due to stiffer side stability, which you can get in a narrow profile tire anyways)

But the negatives:

1) It Weighs More - and that weight has a huge impact because rolling mass is much more difficult to move

2) More Friction - Again, a drop in efficency due to difficult in rolling the wheel

3) More Expensive - No longer a need for "expensive" tire pressure monitoring systems (which probably aren't all that expensive, although they are sometimes troublesome) and you don't have to replace your tires as often, but if the tweels cost 3x as much, there is no saving here

4) Noise - No one likes loud tires.

Now I doubt they can get the weight down to a point that is ever lower than that of a rubber air filled tire (air is... well very light) but I could see a weight improvement, and the friction improvement both helping with research and design. And the cost of the tires will always probably remain higher, so this looks like long term technology to me.