Pneumatic tires are not new products, but set off a new wave of enthusiasm, for a variety of reasons.
First of all, the global car ownership continues to increase rapidly, resulting in up to 100 million tires discarded every year due to tire blowout and other reasons, especially the vast majority of tires are made of synthetic rubber refined from petrochemical industry as raw materials, resulting in a huge waste of resources and environmental burden. With climate change and sustainable development becoming increasingly urgent as global issues, the advantages of no-maintenance and long service life of pneumatic tires are further highlighted.
Secondly, non-inflatable tires tend to have more complex internal structures than inflatable tires, such as the honeycomb like pore structure mentioned earlier. Traditional rubber forming processes are not conducive to the production of extremely complex structures, but 3D printing technology has made great progress in recent years. This additive manufacturing method is very suitable for the production of complex structures, although the production speed is low. The latest products of Goodyear and Michelin are all manufactured by 3D printing technology, which can reduce production costs. The printing material is recycled waste rubber, which can further reduce the adverse impact on the environment.
Finally, the development of shared mobility and autonomous driving technology brings greater imagination to the application scale of pneumatic free tires. In the case of shared vehicles, improving their effective service time is an important consideration, which requires that the frequency and time of maintenance must be reduced, and non-inflatable tires can just hit the key point to meet this need.
Driverless taxis have grown rapidly in the past five years, with more and more Chinese and foreign cities launching commercial pilot projects and even removing the safety officer from the driver's seat altogether. Under such circumstances, experienced drivers cannot be expected to change the spare tire as soon as possible in case of abnormal conditions such as a flat tire. Instead, they have to wait for rescue workers sent from a remote location, which can affect service quality and operation efficiency. Therefore, as the development of driverless taxis, inflatable tires will be more useful.