Ford Develops New Wheels Specifically For Airless Tires

In a patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, CarBuzz has discovered that Ford is working on wheels developed specifically for the task of wearing airless tires, indicating that major developments in airless tires may be on the horizon.

Airless tires are nothing new. Goodyear showed off its latest take on the tech last year, and Michelin revealed new developments a couple of months ago, but most of the attempts at perfecting the technology are based on the idea that the tire alone needs to change. Ford has taken a different approach, with its patent suggesting that the traditional wheel element may be much smaller and with a wholly different design to what we're currently used to, providing a means through which airless tires could be effectively beaded to the wheel and then removed when the time to replace them arrives.

The patent details the wheel and tire assembly possibly being arranged in two pieces, where the core (the alloy wheel) can be separated from the airless tire, which itself will have flexible spokes - as opposed to current airless tire proposals in which the wheel still has spokes and the airless tire only occupies the space of a current tire (see below). The inner element of the tire and the outer element of the wheel would have corresponding angles and vertices in their construction so that the outer area that acts as the tire could be squeezed onto the core. The recesses would keep the core and outer structure locked firmly together.

Alternatively, what we would call the barrel of the wheel could have a larger diameter on the outer side and a smaller diameter on the inboard side, forming a cut-off cone shape, again allowing one to squeeze a replacement outer or core onto the wheel assembly with relative ease. In this instance, an outer locking ring would secure the wheel and tire together.

Airless tires do not use compressed air to cushion blows and support the vehicle. Instead, polymeric spokes (potentially with varying material compositions for different surfaces and conditions) absorb the impact, meaning that there is no airlock caused by the compressed air pushing the bead of the tire into the wheel.

When there is damage - we're pretty sure you can still do burnouts in a Mustang even if it has airless tires - the car can continue to drive safely, and when the tire needs replacing, the process could be even quicker and easier than it is today. It also means that choosing a new wheel design would not require the replacement of the wheel itself, but rather the airless tire which may be available with different spoke designs.

In a nutshell, this patent proposes yet another method of constructing airless tires, which suggests that the tech will soon become viable for the mass market. It's just a matter of seeing whose approach to non-pneumatic tires is the best.