The item for discussion today will be about airless tires, NPTs (Non-pneumatic tyre), which may be coming to consumers sooner than expected – hows about sometime in the year 2014 (not a type-o).
Surely you’d remember an email that many thought was a hoax; along with those venomous spiders that likes to hide under your toilet seat, went floating around the web and into people’s inboxes, showcasing that Michelin engineers had come up with an airless tyre sometime in 2005 – it seems it wasn’t a hoax.
Of late, off-road vehicle specialist Polaris wants it to be reality with a promise, one that would start selling airless tires by 2014, after they managed to acquire a company sometime last year that actually developed the NPT – enter Resilient Technologies.
How an NPT works is very similar to that of a bicycle wheel, where the load in carried in tension across the top of the wheel and the bottom of the wheel is designed to give in to obstacles like rocks, curbs, and other terrain – says Polaris spokesperson Jason Difuccia.
In order to help simplify it, Polaris is saying that an NPT is basically flat-proof, hence, you won’t need to worry about making space for a spare wheel, jack and a tyre iron if you’re intending to go for an of-road excursion.
Presently, there’s no mention of price for an NPT, But right now, we can only wonder how one would ‘bling’ one’s car with a set of ‘spot ling’ (sport rims) and low profile tyres.
http://youtu.be/Pja6vKnEV4E
