It's 2022, and we still have to worry about tire punctures during driving?
Science and technology have been developing, the active and passive safety of automobiles and new energy vehicles has tended to be perfect, and there is not enough safety configuration, which can basically be regarded as a lack of competitiveness. However, even if the active and passive safety development to today, there is no parts and components company to have an innovative breakthrough in tire technology, and the change is nothing more than the material formula.
Finally, the field of automotive tires is about to usher in an innovative product called "pneumatic tires."
Pneumatic tires, is it necessary now?
To put it simply, the advantage of pneumatic tires is that they can reduce the rate of punctures and improve the service life, and it is said that the earliest pneumatic tires were popularized in solid tires around 1900. Because of the performance problem, most of the tires we see on the mass production cars are still inflatable tires, and most of the solid tires are still used on construction vehicles.
Most of the current pneumatic tire solutions and products cannot reach the comprehensive performance of pneumatic tires in terms of performance, including cushioning performance, durability, high-speed performance, weight, cost and other aspects. Therefore, in the short term, we will not be able to see mass-produced pneumatic tires installed on civilian vehicles.
But in three or five years it should work, the tire will be Michelin Uptis, and the car should be Chevrolet's Bolt.
GM is communicating with Michelin the idea of installing pneumatic tires on the next-generation Chevrolet Bolt new energy vehicle, which won't be on the road until three to five years from now. Why do tire manufacturers not make pneumatic tires for nearly a hundred years and start doing it now? Why do new energy vehicles want to be loaded first?
What are the benefits of pneumatic tires?
Reduce the damage caused by external factors to the tire; reduce the chance of safety hazards caused by changes in air pressure, such as punctures; and reduce the cost of traditional spare tires and related spare equipment.
The advantage is naturally to reduce the probability of tire damage and puncture, which is very beneficial to the automatic driving function of new energy vehicles. Even if the new energy vehicle fully packs the active and passive safety functions, no matter how many redundant settings, the process of automatic driving cannot withstand the impact of a tire burst.
In addition, because there is no air pressure inside the tire, there may be a new fixing method to fix the tire and the hub; and the quality of the pneumatic tire should be lighter than the same size of the pneumatic tire, which may leave some "weight space" for the hub motor, after all, the quality requirements of the wheel hub motor are still quite high.
Pneumatic tires are nothing new, but they now seem to be full of possibilities. For example, can lighter quality increase battery life? Can I add an in-wheel motor? Can we improve the safety of autonomous tires?
In the initial stage, how long will it take to mature?
In addition to the michelin Uptis pneumatic tires mentioned above, Bridgestone and Goodyear are also making their own pneumatic tires, but the form is basically the same, and the interior uses glass fiber ribs to replace the air support of traditional tires.
Fiberglass rib support and removal of tire walls seem to be the only solution for the tire industry to avoid inflation. Goodyear and Prisc are in use of this form, and the former is still working on a ball tire that does not need to be inflated (which is more difficult to implement). Since there is no air between the hub and the tire, the glass fiber ribs are replaced as supports, so the thickness of the tire tread becomes a key factor, determining whether the internal fiber ribs of the countertop can be protected in the face of impact, so as not to cause internal damage and lead to the reduction of tire life.
The tire's formula and tread pattern determine the performance of the tire, from the structure of Michelin Uptis, the tread pattern and formula can copy the traditional tire, but the tire without air pressure will have some fluctuations in performance. The car's pneumatic tires are essentially the same as the pneumatic tires of mobikes that we can contact before, the structure is the same, there is no tire wall, no inflation, compared to the experience will feel that the shock absorption effect is not very good.
The automotive industry has been developing for more than a hundred years, and in recent years, pneumatic tires have only been put on the table to attract attention, and the fastest few years will be loaded and listed. Everything seems to be for the new energy autonomous driving ring, and it has also been said that reducing the risk factor is its only benefit at present. Taking Michelin-free pneumatic tires as an example, it is heavier than the same size of traditional tires, and the price is also 200-400 yuan / per tire; the comfort is between traditional tires and explosion-proof tires, which is not particularly good but not bad.
What kind of models will the first tires, which are high cost, medium comfort and lower performance, be used in? Personally, I think that when the pneumatic tire is initially applied in a few years, it may be prioritized in the B-end market for high cost reasons, such as new driverless test fleets, travel services, etc.; also because the performance/comfort is not as good as that of traditional pneumatic tires, for the time being, it should be temporarily out of touch with sports and luxury cars.
summary
At this stage, the development status of pneumatic tires, it has no advantages except that it does not burst tires, but it is too important for automatic driving. If the wheels burst during the automatic driving process, the L3 level can still have humans to take over, and even if they take over, there is still a great risk. Therefore, the characteristics of pneumatic tires that do not burst tires are just in line with the needs of the future development of automatic driving.
Of course, the current pneumatic tires are only in the early stages of development, and these products are often matured through multiple iterations. There is also a lot of expansion of pneumatic tires, such as giving priority to the introduction of off-road tires that do not require high comfort performance, and the optimization of functional materials in the later stage to reduce the weight of the tires to reduce the burden of the weight under the spring for the hub motor? It's possible.