Bridgestone advancing AirFree tire technology with teeny tiny cars

TOKYO—Even teeny tiny cars need great, big innovations.

Sustainable innovations. Innovations of the airless tire kind.

Turns out, Bridgestone knows a thing or two about both.

"Bridgestone has placed sustainability at the core of its management and business and strives to realize its vision of continuing to provide social and customer value as a sustainable solutions company toward 2050," Bridgestone Japan told Rubber News. "The AirFree concept tire is an example of how Bridgestone will strengthen its sources of competitive advantage through innovation as it works toward its 2050 commitments."

Bridgestone is strengthening its expertise in the nonpneumatic tire arena, thanks in part to a partnership with Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu Kosan. Together, the two companies are broadening their understanding of what a more sustainable mobility future could look like and working to redefine their roles in it.

And when it comes to their roles in the partnership, each brings complementary technologies that enhance their respective expertise.

Bridgestone is working to advance its sustainable, airless tire technology across applications—in the case of the partnership on micro-compact electric vehicles—while Idemitsu Kosan looks to further its expertise within the mobility as a service space.

So far, the partnership has led to further development of airless tire technology for the micro-compact cars, and testing of this newly developed technology launched last month.

The project is far from Bridgestone's first foray into the airless tire space. The company has been focused on nonpneumatic tire technology for more than a decade, starting with an airless bicycle concept tire that was introduced in 2013.

From there, Bridgestone began exploring every possible application for the technology. And it's not ruling any mobility segment out.

"We see many opportunities across the mobility space where nonpneumatic tires might have an application case, and we are exploring these industries across our global enterprise," Bridgestone said.

In North America, specifically, Bridgestone is focused on the biggest applications—the commercial vehicle sector. It's one of the more challenging applications to build the technology for, but Bridgestone believes it's the most efficient, understanding it's easier to scale down for smaller load applications, rather than scale up.

But that is just one space where the AirFree technology could land. The Japan-based firm also is focusing on that micro-compact EV space and even thinking outside-the-atmosphere, designing nonpneumatic tires for lunar rovers.

Through it all, there's a couple of common threads connecting Bridgestone's capabilities and advancements in all of these sectors. Simply: advancements in materials science and simulation capabilities.

When it comes to materials, tires designed especially for the micro-compact EVs rely on thermoplastic resins and recyclable rubber, Bridgestone told Rubber News.

The tires also are intended to be retreaded.

"Some of the Bridgestone AirFree concept tires can be produced more sustainably than traditional pneumatic tires, as they are made of recyclable resins and rubbers," the Japanese firm said in an email.

And that sustainability piece matters—the recyclability and retreadability are key components to the company's much broader sustainability mission.

"Bridgestone is accelerating initiatives for contributing to a realization of carbon neutrality and a circular economy for advancing its 'Sustainability Business Framework' that ensures the link between sustainability activities and business across the entire value chain, and its AirFree concept tires contribute to accelerating this strategy," the company said.