Airless Tires Roll Towards Consumer Vehicles
Air-filled (pneumatic) tires give our vehicles comfortable, cushiony rides. (Thanks tires, we appreciate that.) Looking at it from another perspective, pneumatic tires are containers of pressurized gas that are being subjected to constant abuse, and when something happens to them, it can result in a situation that falls somewhere between a minor annoyance and a deadly catastrophe. We’ve ridden on these things for about 130 years now, and while they’ve improved substantially since John Dunlop invented them to keep his kid from getting headaches while riding his bike, it seems that we can still do better. Hankook is trying to make better happen with a consumer-oriented airless tire.
Instead of pressurized air as a shock absorber that can also support the weight of the vehicle, airless tires (also called non-pneumatic tires, or NPTs) use deformable solid materials (usually rubber) to achieve the same effects.
More: Airless Tires Roll Towards Consumer Vehicles - IEEE Spectrum