I didn’t say the H2 could self inflate. The H2 My wife had had an optional compressor that you could use to fill tires. The HUMVEE’s I drove in the military had onboard air where you could inflate and deflate from inside, civilian H1’s have that as well. Portal axles are gears and have nothing to do with air, they simply lift where the drive shaft attaches in the wheel.
But to inflate and deflate while in motion or without getting out, you need an air path that isn’t affected by wheel rotation.
The only way I’ve seen the done is by running the air down the center of the axle and then hooking that up to the tire valve.
Running air down the center of the axle is much easier on a six inch axle than a three foot one, or one with CV joints in it.
As a result, CTIS is generally only offered on portal axle vehicles as noted above.
Since the trimotor is probably using a separate gear train for each rear wheel anyway, it doesn’t seem like there is much penalty to building that with portals, but the front is a different story, and it will add to the unsprung weight on either.
I guess one potential advantage of doing the Cybertruck specifically with portals would be they might be able to use the exact same gearbox as Plaid cars inboard with the Portal reduction handling the larger wheels and lower speeds instead of designing a second version of the Plaid gears with higher reduction ratios for the truck.
Of course they probably need a similar set of tall gears already for the Semi...
