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Goodyear's 'On TheGo' Self Inflating Tire
SternisheFan writes with a bit of maintenance saving tech for drivers. From the article: "When was the last time you checked your tire pressure? If you're scratching your head, you might want to put a set of Goodyear's new self-inflating tires on your ride. The company's Air Maintenance Technology was rolled out of the lab this week for debut at a car show in Germany. Commercial truckers will be the first to put the rubber to test, but a consumer version is in the works. A regulator in the tire senses when tire-inflation pressure drops below a pre-set point and opens to allow air flow into the pumping tube. As the tire rolls, deformation flattens the tube, pushing air through the tire to the inlet valve and then into the tire cavity. All this technology, in Goodyear's words, eliminates the need for 'external inflation pressure intervention.'"
The bike on inflates itself simply by rolling. I would love to have these, but they're not exactly mass production yet and I've got a lot of goofy tire sizes on my bikes.
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aaaaand POP! ;)
So how long before this technology is implemented to other 'inflatable' ummm... technologies?
I'm sure that this has many 'practical' implications for the 'companions' of the slashdot readership?
... the pressure of all tires displayed in the instrument panel. I don't mind re-inflating periodically.
Also, I would be able to see over time whether any tire leaked air.
did you factor in this vs the fuel economy of an inferior donut tire, plus the fuel wasted by towing cars that don't have spares, or the fuel wasted by driving to the tire store? (Though honestly, getting them online will have you spending less and getting a better quality tire, then wal-mart will put them on for about $13/tire.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Deploying spike strips won't undermine the gent in the wife beater quite as dramatically...
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I think you're missing the point. This is EXACTLY what we need with gas at $4/gallon.
When your tire pressure is low, you get less MPG. So this tire, when the pressure gets low will open a valve to "reinflate" your tire to specified pressure. Ensuring proper ride, handling and better gas mileage.
It's not going to inflate constantly, rather just when the tire drops below a set level. Kind of like a thermostat. but for pressure. A barometricstat.
Currently, I pay around $400-$600 per truck tire in my fleet and this is using my national fleet account from Bridgestone. I would hate to see what the price of this tire is going to be. The current prices are already hard to swallow when I have 80 Heavy-Haul trucks and over 200 trailers. That is a lot of tires!
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Goodyear tire saying their new auto-inflating tire violates their patents. They have "an app for that", and therefore, Goodyear's later tire is cleary a copy of one of their several millions apps. Apple is not sure which one, but they know since there is an "app for everything", Goodyear must be in violation.
They are asking $3.9 billion in damages and a halt on all sales of Goodyear tires. As they've pointed out tires are a clear infringement of their trade dress. Their buttons on their iPhones and iPads are round. And Goodyear tires are round. So that's $1 for every tire Goodyear has sold.
How about tires that don't need air?
Those tires need windows you can open to let the air in.
About 5 years until they hit the market?
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
A regulator in the tire senses when tire-inflation pressure drops below a pre-set point
Aside from the "self-inflating" part, all new cars sold in the US have a built-in tire pressure sensor.
Sounds great, right? The car lets you know when you need to add air, so you always have safe, optimal-fuel-efficiency tires. Right?
Except... If you live anywhere North of, say, Miami, these goddamned useless sensor will tell you to add air all fucking winter long.
I see these tires, if they work at all (and gimmicky crap like this has a long history of failing at the drop of a hat), lasting exactly one season... On the coldest night of the year when you drive home late, they'll "fix" your low pressure. Then six months later, after a long tire-warming road trip 400 miles from home, the massively over-spec pressure will blow out your bulb seals. Time for new tires, thank you for buying Goodyear!
How can I regulate this? My car uses fairly higher pressure than the average.
Bu the way, my tire pressure remains fairly constant over the seasons, I only need to check it twice a years, why should I buy an heavyer, softier tire? There is no economy in that.
'external inflation pressure intervention.'
Do not ask your girlfriend for this, ever.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Once upon a time there was young, generally decent chap who'd previously had some unpleasant experiences with the police. He wasn't particularly inclined toward evil deeds, but he was young, played video games and listened to punk rock. One night en passant a police vehicle, he got a wild idea. This chap, who typically carried a general purpose tool, aka a pocket knife, imagined inserting it into one or more of the tires attached to the police vehicle. The notion was appealing enough that he decided to test it. After a cursory glance in 360 degrees, he furtively approached the police vehicle, hesitating only for a moment before the tip of his blade met the nylon tire. He had been expecting all sorts of loud bangs and at the very least a distinct hissing sound. When nothing but the stiff resistance of the well-built tire was observed, he might have stayed to ponder, but instead retreated half-pleased at his own failure. The tire was unaffected, but he was not -- for despite the generally shoddy nature of the seemingly superfluous societal components that menaced about him, he realized that some were intelligently designed. Tires that could not be popped; it made sense, so much unlike so many other aspects of the strange and arbitrary adult world that imposed itself onto him daily.
The years passed and he gave up punk rock for newer things like dubstep and IDM. He remembered all his bad encounters, which were now a medley of too many individuals to have any single one stand out. He no longer suffered such futile impulses, re-focusing his efforts in more positive directions, like beer and bash-scripting and nature. But still to this day, every time he sees a screw or nail laying on the asphalt imperiling the tires of all but a special few, he wonders why; why can we not all have tires that yield not to trivial roadside rubbish?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Where this technology is needed is RV and trailer tires. If a car tire blows, usually one has a time where it runs flat. A travel trailer or a fifth wheel, you don't feel the blown tire until it has blown off the rim and caused significant amounts of damage to the rig. Having something like this wouldn't just save 1-2 MPG, it might save a $50,000 trailer or more if it keeps a tire on the rim.
Neat idea, as long as they factor in some kind of fail safe against the system over-inflating and exploding the tire. That would be very bad and probably result in severe damage to the car, and perhaps death to the occupants & others in their way.
All cars in the USA already come with an electronic system telling the driver if a tire is underinflated.
Yes, this relies on the driver actually doing something about it - but just how idiot proof do we really need to make cars?
Not trolling here, but how does it pump only air and not water? I've driven in some wet parts of the country, and many more that were snowy and slushy. There's a lot of dust and moisture down there on the road at times.
How can I regulate this?
You can't. The government regulates everything.
I have to say this one is an actual invention, very clever. First invention I've come across in several years.
How does this system not slowly pump more and more water into you tires on rainy days?
You might send a similar script to TheOnion; it's so bizarrely close to possible, they'd probably use it. In fact, the same sense I got while reading this comment, is the same I get when reading genuine iNews. ;P
..Or were you being serious? I just can't tell anymore
TFA says $627 lost per year for a trucker due to a 1% loss of efficiency from underinflated tires, but that's only 153 gallons worth at the stated $4.10/gal for US diesel; what is that, about 5 fillups for a big rig? So it sounds like a minor win for truckers; a noble idea all the same. I wonder what the collective fuel savings would be if everyone used these. I used to think congestion must waste some staggering amount of oil, before finding some figures that suggested congestion leads to loss of ca. 280k barrels of oil consumed as gasoline in the US per day - which sounds like a lot, until you realize we plow through about 9 million barrels of gasoline daily.
I don't see how his would help with blowouts other than perhaps by reducing tire wear a bit by maintaining ideal pressure. No amount of "trickle-charging" is going to compensate for the fact that there is a gaping hole preventing the tire from holding air. And the usage scenario for trailers and RVs is generally sit around for months on end and then get driven around for a short while - unless the charge rate is pretty fast you'd still want to top off your tires before you hit the road, though I suppose it would be handy for those absent-minded individuals that forget to do so until they've been on the road for a hundred miles or so.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Tire pressure should be set by the specific application. In a passenger car that generally has a weight that varies only a small amount over its service life, this tire could save a little time, but since it will almost certainly cost more, I don't much see the point. Car tires don't generally leak that much, and thanks to TPMS, (such as the one in my Chevy Impala with which I can see the pressure in each tire displayed on my dashboard) I can check without having to take the valve stem caps off. When it gets a little low, I top off the tires. However, the pressure that should be in each tire corresponds to the characteristics of the tire, AND THE LOAD ON THE TIRE. If you drive on tires with pressure that is too low, you get degraded performance, a spongier ride, increased likelihood of rim damage due to road irregularities, debris, etc., as well as excessive wear to the left and right edges of the tires. If the pressure is too high, depending on HOW MUCH they're too high by, you run risks ranging from degraded performance, increased chance of a blow-out, and the associated loss of control and crash that often occurs with this sort of thing at high speed, especially dangerous if two or more fail simultaneously. As a minimum, you can expect better fuel economy from your over-inflated tires, but decreased tire life span, as you'll see excessive wear in the center of the tread area, which also means greater odds of a flat from puncture than you'd have running over the same thing with a tire having the proper pressure.
As for load, you must understand that the pressure inside the tire is equivalent to the distribution of weight over the entire area of the contact patch, the area of the tires' tread that touches the surface on which you're driving (the road, usually, though occasionally the sidewalk for more adventurous types). So if your tires are inflated to 50 p.s.i., and they're supposed to be at 25, the area in contact with the road should be about half of what it should be. Some people mistakenly believe their tires should be inflated to the MAXIMUM TIRE PRESSURE marking on the sidewall of the tire, and that's simply NOT TRUE under most circumstances. That's a specification that indicates the greatest internal/external pressure differential the tire can safely and reliably handle, under the normal stresses a tire is exposed to, when used in an application for which it was designed, and still give service life as specified and maybe also warranted by the manufacturer.
So if a tire mounted to a passenger car that weighs 3000 pounds, and has a recommended tire pressure of 30 p.s.i. front and rear, is designed to have a contact patch that is 75 square inches, and you are routinely carrying 1000 pounds (between you, the driver, and all the cargo, and let's say the weight is more or less evenly distributed throughout the car,) the load on each tire is 4/3 what the specified pressure was intended for. You should therefore increase the COLD pressure for each tire, (measured and filled when the car has NOT just been driven, as per the manual of every car and truck I'VE ever owned...) by the same amount, so each tire should be at about 40 p.s.i., which BTW, if you carefully note the shape of the tire when the car is empty, the size of the contact patch, you should find it is the same when the pressure is bumped up to 40, with the extra weight added.
Failure to adjust will result in tires that are overinflated or underinflated, depending on when you failed to adjust. Obviously, if you're carrying 3000 pounds in a car that weighs 3000 pounds, you'll probably void the warranty on car and tires, may damage both, and since the tires are probably not designed to handle TWICE THE RECOMMENDED PRESSURE for that car, you run the risk of catastrophic tire failure.
On SUV's and pickup trucks, esp. heavy duty ones, you'll note that in point of fact, the tires that come on them usually have a substantial overhead, can be aired up to much higher pressure than the recommended. This is because such vehicles
How does it do under these conditions?
How many tires have to be replaced due to slow leaks? Often they can be fixed but a system like this could determine when it is economically feasible to fix a slow leak (since energy is required to maintain inflation and it is required to replace an otherwise servicable tire).
Hell, my biggest worry might be tires getting run to the point catastrophic failure.
What if I drive backwards? Does it deflate the tire?
I know a guy who runs a fleet of 500 trucks. If he could save $627 annually per truck that would mean a third of a million dollars back in his pocket every year. Another benefit is if his 500 drivers are each spending 5 minutes a day checking tire pressure, he could possibly reduce that to once per week if he rolled with these tires, saving another $200,000 annually on simple maintenance. (I don't know how anything about how often his drivers check tire pressure manually, or if they have remote sensors, so that could be completely imaginary savings.)
Under-inflated tires fail more often than properly maintained tires, which means less down-time dealing with flats. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you realize that tires last only about 80,000 miles each and you have 18 on a rig, that could be a tire failure every 13 days. If all your tires are under-inflated, they would all last about 9% less, which would be a failure every 12 days. Most failed tires are caught by inspection, where the driver is already in a truck stop and repairs are less costly than side of the road service, and some tire failures are drivable to the next truck stop, where the driver will burn some downtime while he's getting it fixed, but not every failure is so convenient. Roadside service will take a couple of hours out of your schedule while you wait for the local guy to come out and fix it. Plus, tires are not cheap (the smaller trailer tires can cost around $500 each for new, (less for retreads,) and steer tires are significantly higher) and if a blowout damages something else, it's even more money. You want to get every mile you can out of those tires.
And what happens if you're running a hot shot, with a significant penalty for failing to deliver on time? One late load can cost a large amount in direct losses, (think six figures) plus the potential loss of business if the big-spending customer never hires that sloppy trucking firm again.
Every little improvement is significant to someone when multiplied by fleet sizes.
John
Amen to that. On my last car I pumped up the right rear tyre every week for 18 months till it wore out. Life would be greatly simplified for terminally tight-assed people like me.
When the last time the check tire light came on. Some gas stations will let you pump air for free if you ask nicely.
You may not notice, but if you drive on a dry road in winter, your tires will warm up. This means that in winter, you will often have cold tires that are under inflated when you step into your car after a cold night, but will warm up and be on pressure after 10-20 minutes of driving. I don't see how a TPMS is going to deal with that in any other way than indicate the tires are under inflated until they heat up, because they technically are. The TPMS has no way to see how long, fast or sporty you are going to drive and even if it does, it still should warn you since cold, under inflated tires will give you less grip than you may expect.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Run flat tires will pop and hiss if you stick a sharp object through the side plies or if you really feel like you have to prove something, the thread, but will not flatten so much that they can't be driven to the next service point. Tires that are "bullet proof" essentially aren't, but have an inner ring of special reinforced plastic constructed when the tire is half on the rim. Those still pop from the bullets, but hardly drop to the ground at all, giving you even more time/speed to get away from danger and to the next tire replacement location.
Putting a knife in an inflated car tire requires a lot more force than most people think. I think it's a lot more probable that the young punk trying to do this tried to stick a wide blade into a regular tire and found out that you need to use an ice pick or similar object to actually have enough strength in your arm to penetrate it.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Not to mention the fuel wasted by having underinflated tires....
Also, most of the *good* tires, the tire shop will install and balance them as part of the MSRP. My car has Michelin X-ICE i2 in the winter, and Bridgestone Potenza tires in the summer, and I don't think I've ever needed to pay for a wheel balance on that car.
given that different cars have different manufacturer-specified inflation levels, it's a fairly safe bet that when a consumer version of this hits the market, it'll be programmable in some way.
about 25 years ago when the Berlin Wall came down, my buddy bought a 6x6 offroad truck from the Soviet Red Army
which had self inflating tyres
probably a much less sophisticated system, probably fully mechanical, but it was right there!
sue them in court for infringing on one of their mobile device patents.
Tires and trucks are mobile "devices" after all.....
2) Same tire online sent to your house, then you drive and get it balanced, will tend to save you a pretty penny.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Not really... :) When you factor in the cost of shipping... different economies and such, though, could be different in your neck of the woods. Here in Canada, not so much. Plus, when I bought the winter tires, there was a manufacturer rebate on, and I got enough cash back from Michelin to cover the cost of the rims for the winter tires. If I'd bought them online, I wouldn't have qualified for that. :)
I expect the winter tires to last at least another 3, maybe 4 years before I have to buy new ones, and the summer tires I'll probably be replacing at the end of next season (so the start of the following season to take advantage of summer sales)... if I remember, I'll check online at that time. But I'm also probably going to go with Pirellis instead of the Bridgestones at that point, and I'm not sure you can even get those online. A quick search online for the Pirellis I like right now, however, I stand to save about $6/tire over the price that I was quoted by my tire shop, and the tire shop price included installation and balance.
... and I see they want $385/tire for the Bridgestones I have right now.... I have no idea how much they cost Subaru when I bought the car, but considering that they were included in the purchase price of the car, I doubt it was anywhere near that much....
But I didn't RTFA.
The side wall on under-inflated tires is flexed more per revolution by orders of magnatude than at proper inflation. It is akin to bending a paper clip.
Hundreds of millions of tires go from fresh, deep tread with the tiny mold fingers to terrifyingly bald and that volume difference goes... where? Click n' Clack never could come up with an answer; maybe someone here knows.
How long can it be before we see an NTSB recall of exploding tires?
There is a great discussion of this in The Wide Lens.
In a nutshell, Michelin developed technology similar to this in the 1990's and partnered with Goodyear to bring it to market. It was pretty cool, but the problem was they couldn't get tire installers to pay for the expensive equipment and employee certification required to implement the technology. Fine for commercial or military fleets, but the overall ecosystem didn't work for consumers. What ended up happening was that when you got a flat you ended up having to replace all 4 tires and only at the dealer. Lawsuits ensued.
Hopefully they have resolved the ecosystem issues.
I have to say this one is an actual invention, very clever. First invention I've come across in several years.
This was introduced at some auto & tire trade shows several years ago, it looks like Goodyear may have licensed the technology (or figured out a way around the patents??). The pumping element is in the tire sidewall, near the rim. This is the first place that I saw the idea:
http://www.selfinflatingtire.com/ Press releases on this site go back to 2009.
This tech steals jobs from hard working people. Goodyear obviously wants to devastate the tire service industry. We need to ban this technology in the interest of economics. You should NEVER let progress get in the way of profitability.
Typically the only time people really look at their tires is to see if they need air. This is when many people take a look and decide, hey time to rotate, or gee, my alignment is way off, or holy cow, my tires are dangerously over worn in general and it's time for some new. In the long run I see this as potentially detrimental for some people.
I thought most big rigs were already running a central tire inflation system; wouldn't a self-inflating tire be redundant for your fleet?
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Under-inflation is a major cause of blowouts.
Not sure where the softer tire comes from. I have a vehicle, first gen Prius that requires higher load rated tires. But if your air pressure is not kept up properly, the tire's load bearing ability drops.
Btw, the do you do your own oil changes? Cause if not, then you're probably having your tires filled up more often than you realize. Or, you might actually NOT be doing as good of a job monitoring pressure as you think. You may be within tolerances, but not optimized.
I agree, this is an invention and patentable. Though I am sure many have had this concept before, as is the case with many inventions. This is at least something new. And even that, is evolutionary, as all the items needed to do it, one way pressure valves, monitors, tires, etc are pre-existent.
I guess it must be some sort of "air mass" control system. Let me explain:
Considering that low pressure will make the tire wall bend more, the natural irregularities of the road and the suspension system will make it bounce significantly more. The problem for the tire is that the temperature of the air inside rises (I remember how hot the air came out of the pump after inflating bike tires...), and so does the pressure. So if you check the pressure while on the road, it may appear as if it has too much pressure. A common mistake is to let some air out until the pressure reaches the recommended setting, which is really for "rested" tires. This action makes the problem worse and it may become a vicious circle if the driver checks that same tire repeatedly... it is not uncommon to get a tire blown up like this.
Therefore, the only robust option is to measure pressure and temperature and obtain the amount of air that is inside. If it's lower than the recommended setting, then it should allow air to get in.
PS: It may be more convenient though to just set a "hot" referential pressure and let the system work only by pressure after some time on the road. If the technology Goodyear developed works on the road and only uses pressure, this might be the way it works, but TFA does not go into details over this.
PS2: I'm not a native english speaker, please excuse my spelling/grammar mistakes.
With a bit of thought, I would expect the the pumping could be made to happen just when the side walls are sagging a bit due to lower air pressure, and not operating when they are upright, due to correct air pressure.
emt 377 emt 4
but a different way of doing the same thing as this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=_I4WAAAAEBAJ
No Bueller! That doesn't work for odometers or tires.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Not real country song in reverse unless....it also unruns over the dog, and the train unhits mama!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I saw tires like these from some european company at a car show in the early 90's... only not only did it auto-inflate for low-pressure, it had walls and pockets and stuff to make blowouts impossible, and cost as much as regular tire. They said same thing "for truckers at first"... they didn't sell to consumers at the time. I bet the reason we don't see it everywhere is probably the broken patent system. We'll probably never see it. Like the best battery technologies, lighting, hemp materials science...all stifled to protect a shitty greedy businesses profits from a better product
Softer because it will run at a lesser pressure.
Also because I'm used to bridgestone potenza re050a (the car is really sensitive to tyre quality and way better with extra load sidewalls)
What seems like a sudden blow out normally starts as a much slower leak. For example, a little stone gets stuck in the tread of a tyre. Eventually it works its way through the tread, causing a slow leak. Driving on the under inflated tyre causes it to flex excessively and heat up. Eventually, it fails. To the inexperienced driver this feels like a sudden blow out. Same thing with nails, glass, etc.
Obviously if you kiss a brick or a large stone with the side wall of your tyre and it rips a fist size hole in your side wall, this system will not help. However, if your pick up a nail or something, this might be able to keep your tyre pressure high enough so that you don't get a sudden failure. If you are lucky you will make it to your destination and wake up to a flat tyre the next morning.
With trucks, you have (multiple) double axles. This means that if one of your tyres deflate, you often don't notice it until the tyre completely fails and rips to shreds. I suspect this will save the trucking industry millions in lost tyres, never mind fuel.
Yes, no argument on the potential value to the trucking industry, no doubt that's why they appear to be targeting them first. Similarly for personal vehicles that see regular usage, though far fewer private individuals are accustomed to looking at amortized costs rather than sticker price.
It's only on RV and personal trailers, which have a very atypical usage pattern, that I question the usefulness. Perhaps I'm wrong and they could self-inflate fast enough to be useful there as well, but it's far from a foregone conclusion - a few dozen cubic inches per mile would be plenty to keep a healthy tire topped off, but by the time it inflated your RV tire that's been sitting unmoving for six months most of the damage would already have been done.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yikes. I paid about $330 for a pair of Bridgestone truck tires at Costco last fall. (Which is $50 more than a set of four of the same tire cost me 5 years ago!)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Because if a tire runs hot for some reason and over-inflates, a standard valve stem is liable to blow out, and then the tire goes flat and shreds. No hole in the tire itself required to initiate this.
I experienced that while towing a 24' trailer with a dually pickup -- we figure this is what happened: trailer brake started dragging, made the hub hot, this increased tire pressure, which blew out the valve stem, which resulted in a flat tire that beat itself to shreds within a quarter of a mile.
And in that heavy truck, I couldn't feel a thing wrong up front, wouldn't have known there was a problem except I'd heard something go BANG and thought I must have lost something off the truck, so I stopped next place the shoulder was wide enough (high-traffic road) and got out to look. Trailer tire was already confetti, tho amazingly the rim had never touched the pavement.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
All this technology, in Goodyear's words, eliminates the need for 'external inflation pressure intervention.'"
So.... what do you do when you walk up to your car and the tire is flat?