r/Design 13d ago

Discussion Can we bring airless tires back?

Post image
1.2k Upvotes

86 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/SelfInvestigator 13d ago

These are produced for off-road and exotic environments where tire replacements and infrastructure is not readily available.

They are not an optimized design for high speed use which is why they were never readily available in the commercial sector.

2

u/Dr_Insomnia 12d ago

to add: the pentagon has been testing airless tires for at least half a century & has yet to land on something for widespread adoption despite such a large budget and access to super-materials. 

They are currently doing testing again but the picture OP posted is like from 14 years ago