NASA invented wheels that never get punctured

No they fucking didn't.

Wheels that don't puncture have been around for centuries

We don't use them because they are more shit than normal tyres for the majority of use cases.

Specific use cases, such as those faced by NASA may benefit from having such a feature, but to say they "invented" wheels that don't puncture is an outright lie.

Who the fuck wrote this trash?

There are plenty of tires that are puncture-proof. But they all have other major downsides. They're all a different combination of expensive, loud, uncomfortable, and unsafe. That's why none of them ever caught on beyond some specific applications.

There's almost no way bare metal gives the same traction as rubber tyres do. They say it does, but I'd need some really solid data to back that up, for all conditions that the average car will face, not just lab controlled perfect conditions. Tarmac, dirt, snow, rain, heat, cold, etc.

Also one thing I don't see mentioned is noise pollution. As cars go electric, more and more so the main source of noise from cars becomes their tyres. It's weird but true. Think of a motorway and how loud the sound of all those tyres rolling is. These would have to be quieter than rubber tyres to be viable.

Also there's no mention of cost or metal fatigue/wear. Rubber tyres are likely much cheaper to produce - even accounting for economies of scale, they use far less exotic materials.

And I'd be curious how long these tyres last vs traditional tyres through use and wear, how their characteristics such as traction change over time, how they handle hitting debris on the road, be it bits of rocks or whatever. The things cars contend with here and there regularly.

So, while this technology is potentially very promising in a hybrid tyre (like the bicycle tyre shown in the article, Vs the full-metal tyre shown), I have my doubts that need quelling before I see it going anywhere in its full metal state for general use. Specialised, maybe.

I'd love to find something that can replace rubber, and importantly be quieter, and maybe this avenue of research can lead to some great results. I just have my doubts that we're there yet.

I highly recommend this Veritasium video from last year about this subject.

Let me guess, rolling resistance is really high.

This won't work for high-speed vehicles, though. Not yet anyway. So it might be good for bicycles and wheelchairs and such. But the tires of cars and trucks generate a ton of heat from friction at high speed. And that friction is necessary for obvious reasons (traction). The high temperatures disrupt the "memory" of theses. So either they need to be made of materials that can work at higher temperatures which usually means they need to be manufactured at high temperatures that the manufacturing machinery then needs to be designed to operate at by making it from materials that operate at higher temperatures which means manufacturing that at higher temperatures and so on, or the need to make highly efficient insulation and traction layers that are thin enough that they don't affect the ability of the tire to deform and reform its shape.

How’s this any different than the moon rover tires from the 70s?

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/wheel-lunar-rover/nasm_A19750830000

I don't quite get the purpose of that bike tire. Tubeless tires are basically puncture proof aswell. I'd imagine that much metal just makes it unecessarily heavy.

How ya meant to smoke that up?

I'm still waiting for the Michelin Uptis airless tires

That bike tyre is sexy AF.

No they didn't.