Tweel
To reinvent the wheel is something most of us can't fathom doing. Brian Russell of Colorado (and founder of the company Britek), and one of the biggest names in the tire world—Michelin—seem to be in a competition to see who can come out with the best reinvention… first. Imagine a world where tires couldn't go flat- a world where you could run over a patch of nails and not bat an eye. What if this same tire could give you better gas mileage, better handling, and last five times as long as a traditional tire. Now imagine military vehicles that had wheels and tires that were almost impervious to explosions from land mines and IED's, while simultaneously directing blasts outward instead of upward into the cabin. The world is in a new and exciting time right now for the automotive industry and the innovations that are coming out of it. Just like when Clark Foam closed its doors and shocked the surfing world—the world's supply of oil is dwindling—and the days of innovation are upon us. Change is never easy, and usually happens with much groaning and a fair amount of trial and error. But through the tempering furnaces of innovation come such unique inventions as quad fin parabolic balsa stringers, carbon fiber double concave swallow tails and big gun FRP glassed-ins with 50/50 rails on quad channel boards. The aforementioned mumbo jumbo are each things that no one tried before Clark Foam closed its doors, and with the pressure of the looming end of dinosaur blood, companies like Chevy, Toyota, and Honda (as well as a hundred smaller independent companies) are dumping millions of dollars into alternative fuel designs and new technology that would have otherwise never been funded. The catch is there are almost 208,000,000 cars on the road in just the United States alone. That leaves a lot of people who aren't going to trade in their perfectly normally working cars for a brand new car payment. So, this existing market leaves an area that desperately needs attention and fuel saving/ increased efficiency measures taken and introduced.
Enter the Tweel by Michelin and the Energy Return Wheel (or ERW) by Britek.
What these companies have done is create a platform that applies to every car. An airless tire that not only does all of the above mentioned ideas, but then some. A large part of Britek's goal by developing this new technology is to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. By making a wheel more efficient, the platform it utilizes becomes more efficient. This means that the modern cars that aren't equipped with the newest technology, or the latest biodiesel conversion, or even the most efficient fuel injected system around. Just think about how many cars from the 80's and 90's are still on the road. Now think about how far technology has come since then. Now imagine all of those cars getting somewhere between 20% and 37% better gas mileage. That means a 20%- 37% drop in oil consumption—not exactly a small chunk.
To put that into numbers, the current cost of WTI Crude Oil as of today is $99.34 a barrel, and Brent Crude Oil is $113.76 a barrel. The US consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 billion barrels of crude oil per year (based on 6.9B barrels in 2009, and 6.85B barrels in 2008, source: U.S. Energy Information Administration). This means that $695,380,000,000. That's a hefty chunk of change, and one hell of an expensive habit we have. Out of those 7 billion barrels, roughly 53% (source) or $368,551,400,000, were from foreign sources. If we could reduce our consumption by even 15% with better fuel economy we could reduce our foreign dependency by almost $55,282,710,000. That's a big difference, and a huge amount of money. Now, these are just estimates, but if every car in America was equipped with tires that gave them 20% (or more) better fuel economy—that would be an enormous impact on our crude oil consumption. This is the driving force behind the ERW from Britek. Their goal of reducing our dependency on foreign oil, while improving gas mileage for the consumer, and simultaneously transforming tires into safer, better handling properties of our cars seems like an enormous step forward.
Michelin is the next biggest contender for the airless tire; their innovative approach is called the Tweel, a combination of the words tire and wheel. This creative design uses polyurethane inner spokes to support a tire on the outside using the spokes to flex to mimic the properties of a pneumatic tire. The Tweel is already in use in smaller skid-steer applications and has proven to be extremely durable and is currently in testing for the military and other high stress vehicle applications. The upside of the airless tire from both manufacturers is the obvious elimination of flat tires, however—in certain scenarios, this might be an issue- such as police and military checkpoints in which spike strips are utilized. The design of both of these tires renders them impervious to puncture- even from such forces as 250 grams of TNT. The only issue that Michelin seems to be encountering, that the Britek wheel/tire has solved is vibration at high speeds. Both designs are simply engineered, yet complex in their ability to function. Right now, the ERW has patents in the US, Japan and China; and Michelin has already begun to implement their technology small scale for testing, but no word on full-scale production can be found.
The surprising fact about all of this is both of these technologies have been out for well over five years now, and we have yet to see the actual implementation of these on the road. So now, after building you up with so much enthusiasm, I have to admit, that I'm skeptical that either of these companies will succeed in their quests for a mass produced airless tire. The Britek website seems to have been all but forgotten. The last update for their forums by an administrator was over two and a half years ago and they don't seem to exist anywhere else on the internet. The company seems to have fallen off the face of the planet and so does interest in their product. This, at a time when the U.S. is so seriously in need of a new technology for our extreme oil addiction, seems to have been lost. Perhaps the recession hit the company hard? Or perhaps the larger tire manufacturers bought out the technology? Maybe it was a combination of lack of interest and a hard pressed market that drove them underground, but whatever the reason, neither manufacturer seems to have been particularly focused on bringing this technology back to the front of the line.
Another interesting conundrum could be the simple issue of trying to sell technology like this to potential investors. The market has been established with the use of conventional pneumatic tires for almost a century now, and the altering of thinking is always hard to do. The wheels of change move very slowly, (no pun intended) and getting the enormous automobile market- an industry that pulls over $4 billion a year according to SEMA, is surely no easy feat.
Videos on both: