It’s too bad that the Goodyear Aero two-in-one concept tyre shown at the 2019 Geneva motor show isn’t quite ready yet. Otherwise, it would have been perfect for Malaysia’s flying car prototype due sometime this year.
Dubbed as the ‘tyre designed for the autonomous, flying cars of the future’, the Aero concept is a multimodal tilt-rotor in that it can function both as a traditional tyre on the road as well as part of a propulsion system to provide lift when it is re-orientated; which means the wheel spokes would then become fan blades and rotate in high speeds to generate lift, thus propelling the flying car into the air.
The structure of the Aero concept is non-pneumatic, unlike the tyres which you probably rode on this morning, but it is flexible enough to cushion bumps on the road and robust enough to rotate as fast as an aircraft engine’s rotor, utilising magnetic force for frictionless propulsion, like the Maglev train.
Goodyear didn’t give a timeframe as to when the Aero concept would be made available, though its product video does hint at a future not unlike what was seen in the movie I, Robot, so we’re guessing 2030…which isn’t all-that impressive when Malaysia is capable of producing a functioning flying car prototype in 2019!
