Puncture-proof airless tyres are on the horizon, but they won’t work on performance cars

Imagine a world without tyre punctures, repair goo or blowouts. That’s the world promised by airless tyres, which major manufacturers like Goodyear, Michelin and Bridgestone are developing with the goal of achieving better durability, more convenience and less wastage than pneumatic tyres. Unlike a traditional tyre that seals to the rim, airless tyres have a band of tread supported by flexible strands of reinforced plastic, rather than pressurised air, and are thus immune to punctures. Could they feature on your car in the coming years? Potentially, albeit with a few caveats.

Airless tyres might seem like a case of fixing what wasn’t broken, but there’s potential for the technology to drastically alter how we go motoring. Not only in terms of eliminating punctures and the need to keep an eye on tyre pressures, but in how we replace worn rubber. Rather than swapping the entire tyre, there’s the possibility of simply replacing the outer band – reducing wastage, and allowing you to switch to different compounds and tread patterns for specific use cases and conditions.

There are downsides, however, chiefly in terms of how airless tyres behave and perform. For instance, with no pressure adjustment they can’t adapt to different loads and conditions as well (although they can be produced to different specifications from the outset). And given all cars have been developed specifically for pneumatic tyres until now, the construction and design of airless tyres are nowhere near as optimised for their suspension and chassis characteristics as of now. Particularly in the performance car realm, as Goodyear engineer and Global Racing Strategy Director Mike McGregor explains. 

‘The technology needs to suit the application. When you’re looking at the UUHP (ultra-ultra-high-performance) segment, I don’t see that NPT [non-pneumatic tyres] are currently the way to go. The pneumatic tyre has been so extensively developed and the technology is so good in the way it works in unison with the car, how it helps damping and works as a spring, that there’s a long way to go for NPT technology to get to that level.’

With that said, airless tyres are viable for other applications, specifically those where performance is secondary to durability. Delivery vehicles, for example – DHL has trialled the use of Michelin’s puncture-proof Uptis tyre in some regions to minimise unforeseen disruptions. Autonomous vehicles and public transport are strong candidates too. 

‘The original [NPT] technology we used in North America was a tyre for buses in a manufacturing facility to move staff around. Normally, when the buses had a puncture they would just stop. So that’s where we really pushed for NPT. That’s where they’re a much better fit, because if you catch a kerb or have a puncture, NPT can just keep going. But in the high performance segment, there are questions as to why you would go in that direction.’

So while you probably won't be using airless tyres on your track car anytime soon, wider use of the technology might not be far away.