Michelin Rolls Out Airless Vehicle Tire

Michelin is reinventing the wheel and it could one day revolutionize the way we drive.

The Tweel, whose name comes from a combination of the words tire and wheel, is an airless tire that features a conventional tire tread connected to a central wheel connected to flexible spokes.

Taking the air out of the wheel eliminates flats, blowouts and checking your car's tire pressure.

"It's not an evolutionary advancement of the pneumatic tire, it's a revolution," said Michelin engineer Bart Thompson. "It's something completely different."

The main roadblock to using the Tweel for everyday driving is the faster you go, the noisier they get. Uses that involve heavy loads and high speeds are still a challenge the company is working to solve, Thompson said.

Tweels for passenger vehicles won't be in stores for a decade, but the public got its first glimpse this past January when a prototype lunar module using the Tweel participated in the inaugural parade.

While engineers are still working out ways to use the new tire in conventional driving situations, the tire already has applications in the construction industry. It also is being used in mobility systems for the disabled and in the Segway.

The company is also exploring military applications. In testing, the Tweel survived an explosion from a simulated roadside explosive.

It's also being engineered for an eventual out-of-this world trip.

"We are engineering the Michelin lunar wheel to work with manned vehicles and with unmanned robotic vehicles," Thompson said.

The Tweel, which unlike conventional tires can survive the extreme temperatures of space, will be part of NASA missions to the moon or Mars within the next three to five years, he said.