Two start-up companies, Galileo Wheel and SciTech Industries, are seeking support for their new tyre innovations: CupWheel and an airless tyre respectively.
According to Avishay Novoplanski, Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Israel-based Galileo, the firm’s CupWheel tyre eliminates some of the boundaries of traditional tyres because it requires very little air and has an integral run-flat capability. Other advantages of the tyre include a bigger footprint than pneumatic tyres, better load distribution, greater traction, higher efficiency, increased safety and a smoother ride, he said.
SciTech, meanwhile, has innovated a completely airless tyre and is very close to having it ready for commercial production, said Michael Moon, Vice-President of Engineering at SciTech. The design is based on the works of Gyula Subotics, the former R&D head of the now-defunct Taurus tyre company in Hungary.
Ten years of development work has produced a radical, patented new tyre design with supports made from a thermoplastic glass fibre composite that has never before been used in the tyre industry, the firm says. A tyre design was moulded at a contract tyre factory in Eastern Europe and tested successfully, on a standard rim, at a laboratory in the US.
SciTech believes its tyre will improve vehicle fuel economy by as much as 2%, thanks to less sidewall flex than pneumatic tyres, according to Moon. The tyre never runs hot, and the absence of air eliminates slow leaks and tread separations caused by under inflation.
The company also has successfully retreaded the airless tyre, using both pre-cure and mould-cure technologies.
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