The Tweel should improve safety and performance, and barring some unforseen failure mode similar to total Tweel fragmentation or some form of throwing of the tweel tread, (which could be as potentially as dangerous as a conventional tire blowout) will improve road safety.

Now let’s see some real action and the realization of a cost effective product with good performance suitable for our road vehicles that all of us can afford.

Like I said: great idea in theory – but that’s theory for you.

John

Having a combo tyre/wheel goes against the production line theories of having mass=produced and cheap parts. If you trash the tweel, you’re up for the whole thing, rather than just the cheaper cost of say , a tyre, or a hubcap, or a wheel.

That’s the reason why cars are made up of so many smaller parts – to avoid having to pay for larger composite components.

So, the tweel may not the mind-blowing idea it’s touted to be.

It’s that simple anybody could think of it

But necessity is the mother of invention and with the environmental concerns right now, perhaps this is the right time for something like this to come through.

I’ve been putting off re-inflating my tires in my car for months and it’s been costing me at least 3-4 MPG.

To never have to worry about that again.. would be sublime :)

The interesting thing about these Tweels is that they should weigh the same as regular tires (though I bet they’ll eventually be lighter) but they will actually outperform traditional tires. So, we won’t really be giving anything up when they become available.

There is one problem though. Since Michelin surely holds patent on them, there won’t be any competition unless they license the technology. That means prices will be high! The only hope is that because they will still have to compete with regular tires perhaps they’ll keep the prices at least out of the insane range.

I keep wondering how my NSX would look with some of these suckers on it. ;-)

John