OH, TO be the person that invented the wheel.
Lost in the mists of time, the one we all desire to know the identity of shall remain anonymous for eternity. The wheel has been unchanged, pretty much, since those first round things that made humping dead stuff and firewood around a lot easier.
But wheels now come with tyres and these black circles are a bit of a problem environmentally. Constructed of steel, rubber and cloth in a complex web, recycling them is a challenge.
Apart from burning them at a cement works as a fuel, repurposing them into soft play areas or using them as crash barriers at race circuits, little can currently be done with the millions of tyres littering our planet.
What makes it worse is that they are actually quite fragile in use and serious punctures can render tyres useless.
Up step the very clever people at Michelin, who have been working on a new tyre concept called the Tweel – a wheel and tyre combined, that promises a significant advantage over pneumatic tyres.
The Tweel does not use a bladder full of compressed air and, therefore, it cannot burst, leak pressure, or become flat.
Instead, the Tweel assembly’s inner hub connects to flexible polyurethane spokes that are used to support an outer rim and assume the shock-absorbing role provided by the compressed air in a traditional tyre.
While it looks like something from science fiction, the Tweel is in production, has been rigorously tested by the military and, I believe, is extremely comfortable to ride on.
It was first talked about in 2005 and I can honestly say I have never seen one on the road, despite it’s having only five per cent of the rolling resistance of a normal tyre.
Tweels are available for off-road vehicles and golf carts and have participated in long-distance road rallies on standard cars.
It saddens me that we have a brilliant piece of technology that could be changing how we produce and recycle tyres yet, for some inexplicable reason, science fact is still some way off.
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