Props for the Snow Crash reference; though your proposal raises the question of how long it will be(if it hasn’t already been) before a wheel design that depends on sensors and active tuning of wheel structure in real time becomes a thing.
There are some limited, manual, implementations that are surprisingly old(apparently the WWII DUKW had a TARDEC developed central tire inflation system); but that just extended to making it easy to quickly adjust pressure without getting out and futzing with pumps and pressure gauges; or to compensate for modest leaks; it wasn’t automated and was otherwise a fairly conventional pneumatic tire); but even the ‘coming sometime soon’/‘tech demo’ options don’t seem to include terrain mapping radar or the like.
I think the flexing of the spokes + centrifugal force would prevent serious mud buildup, though. As it dries, it would just crack and fall off, wouldn’t it?
I've seen a different sort of bike tire in China - there's a bit of an explosion of hire bikes going on in China, and if you have millions of bikes in the field the last thing you want to do is to have to deal with tens of thousands of daily flats
Have a look at the tire on the orange bike in the front in the photo below (or the light blue one about 8 bikes back) .... it's full of holes, the rest is solid. It's different from the designs above, I'm told it rides like a traditional tire
Any idea what holds it on to the rim? Is it glued? I suppose another way would be for it to be elastic enough snap over the rim, which could be keyed like a belt drive to prevent slip.
My first bicycle (from Sears - we weren’t very well off) had solid rubber tires. I was actually pretty glad my friend’s dad backed over it with his car.
I commuted for ten years on a mountain bike. I appreciated the ability to ride over just about any surface but the nine speed chain drive never shifted reliably. Derailleur hangers failed every 5000km or so. Chains and clusters would last me a couple of thousand k. I broke a few chains taking off from red lights. I am on a hybrid with a belt drive and an 11 speed hub now. Its heaven.
You’d have to go with wire-mesh, then. That’s what NASA eventually put on the three LRVs that were used on the moon.
Come to think of it, when you look into the properties of Lunar Regolith, driving over roads paved with broken glass doesn’t sound that bad anymore.
But what I really want to know is: what will those air-free non-pneumatic tires do to my lawn when those damn kids ride over it?
