TEG

With a number of new EVs announcing the use of PML Flightlink technology, there has been a flurry of discussion about hub motors.

Here is a picture of a Mitsubishi hub motor:


Then there is the Michelin Tweel Airless Tire which has caused some interest.



Are we looking at the future here? Will hub motors with Tweel's be standard on the car of tomorrow?

Both ideas have some merits, but I wonder if they are just experiments to be relegated to the history books.

WarpedOne

Some things are just too ugly to be practical:

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VoltHead

tonybelding

I think the Tweel is very promising, I just wonder what the hold up is. Why haven't they yet been able to bring it to market? It's been something like 12 years since they began R&D on this idea. All you get in the Michelin presentations is how wonderful these things are and all the advantages they offer, but there's never anything said about what problems they are still trying to solve before they can start selling them.

doug

Doesn't look to me like they would handle that well in a curve.

malcolm

Then there's always these:-

http://www.osmoswheel.com/?lang=en

http://www.choppersinc.com/html/bike...ikeID=2&Page=2

TEG

malcolm

When you drive one of these, does it sound like someone blowing over the top of a really big bottle? :)

dsacks6

A lot of new things are viewed as ugly at first.
I try to be open to new things even if they look strange at first.
It takes getting used to sometimes. Once we start to associate something with performance, we will perhaps start looking at it more favorably in terms of looks.
Basically my opinion is that "looks" are not independent of other categories, they effect each other.

dsacks6

I actually asked a guy at a tire place here in LA once about the tweel and what he thought about it. I can't remember exactly what he said but he did mention how on sports cars it would limit the size of the brake rotor.

After I then thought about it and figured that rotors housed further inside the chassis would solve this problem.

There are a lot of technologies that are very promising.
There are two problems that I can see right now.
1. Testing and proving them.
2. Getting people used to the idea. Whether it be the looks/how they look or the idea of them.

vfx

I've always thought the Tweel was cool. I'd like to seem them on a Roadster just for fun.

My question when I look at them is stuff getting inside them. If you go though a 2 inch puddle and the wheel carries water from the ground up to the top and around, how does that affect handling?

And even more curious is how they deal with gravel and rock. I can see stones of just the right size getting lodged in the open spaces and real mucking up the works. And if the wheel lets go of such a rock can you imagine the damage a projectile launching at several hundred miles an hour can do?