NASA metal tires allegedly never get flat or… tired
A couple of the awards at this year’s CES mentioned a metal mesh tire, based on NASA research and missions.
Originally developed by NASA and now commercialized for terrestrial use by The SMART Tire Company, these superelastic tires are airless, durable and will never go flat. Made from a special advanced material, NiTinol+ (nickel titanium), a shape memory alloy (SMA) that’s elastic like rubber, yet strong like titanium.
Priced at only $100 it seems too good to be true.
Its primary claim is durability, since the metal lasts far longer than rubber and is puncture proof. This is huge news for military applications (such as this or this), not to mention other forms of disaster response.
Swiss book about a century of bikes used in war, which gets far less attention than it should.This is the U.S. Army bike used in the 1890s to literally invent mountain biking by riding through the Rockies without roads. Source: Online Bicycle Museum
Makes sense I guess for anyone commuting on the surface of the moon, or a Google campus.
However, for the rest of us the tire seems to lack traction and performance data. NASA missions don’t typically deal with the environments and behaviors found on Earth. And what do they sound like, tank treads on pavement like the Battle of Singapore bikes?
…Eyewitness News videos [were published by a Tiktok user and] three people came forward with the suspect’s name, which he passed along to police. Local law enforcement believe they have identified the man, but an arrest has not been made yet. One of the suspect’s attacks included punching a woman in the face and leaving her with a black eye in October 2021.
Given that his Tesla, blatantly and illegally hiding its license plate, is easily tracked with date and time to exact locations where he targeted victims… it will be interesting to hear why police have delayed so long and allowed crimes to continue.
It has begun to look like a domestic terrorism case. Widespread sharing of the suspect’s identity fortunately may lessen his ability to freely victimize targets, despite lack of police protection.
Update Jan 31:police now say he has a violent criminal record across the entire US for decades, and apparently no job or home just a Tesla full of drugs and cash.
In other words… he has been caught now after mass public outcry. A domestic terrorist targeting women, dealing drugs, causing widespread harms ignored by law enforcement?
Years ago I gave presentations demonstrating how Tesla’s “Autopilot” was ranked dead last by industry experts. NVidia in particular, the real brains behind some of the most advanced and best driver assist options, rated Tesla engineering far behind every other car brand.
It looks like the general public has finally caught up to technologists, as Consumer Reports deservedly dumped the Tesla product down to seventh place behind far more ethical and capable EV companies.
“After all this time, Autopilot still doesn’t allow collaborative steering and doesn’t have an effective driver monitoring system,” said Consumer Reports Auto Testing director Jake Fisher in a statement.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating 830,000 Tesla vehicles with Autopilot after a series of crashes with parked emergency vehicles.
NHTSA is reviewing whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention. In June, the agency said evidence suggested drivers in most crashes with emergency vehicles under review had complied with Tesla’s alert strategy that seeks to compel driver attention, raising questions about its effectiveness.
NHTSA Acting Administrator Ann Carlson said earlier this month the agency was “working really fast” on its Autopilot probe. “We’re moving as quickly as we can, but we also want to be careful and make sure we have all the information we need,” she said.
In 2020, the National Transportation Safety Board criticized Tesla’s “ineffective monitoring of driver engagement” after a 2018 fatal Autopilot crash.
Autopilot enables cars to steer, accelerate and brake within their lanes without driver intervention but Tesla says the feature requires “active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
NHTSA has separately opened more than three dozen Tesla special crash investigations where advanced systems including Autopilot were suspected of being used with 19 crash deaths reported.
It’s not just that Tesla was dumped down to seventh place, it’s that 10 out of 10 Autopilot deaths are Tesla and their fatality rate is rising fast. For example Nissan didn’t even have one single crash to report, despite over 600,000 vehicles operating its direct competitor to Autopilot.
Two car brands couldn’t be more opposite in German industry news, Mercedes luxuriates while Tesla dies.
A new Mercedes EV not only looks and performs decades ahead of the cheap and tired 1990s-era concepts of Tesla, its success is being passed along to the workers making it.
Mercedes-Benz’s 93,000 German Employees Getting €7,300 Bonus. Mercedes-Benz’s latest bonus payout to its employees is even higher than last year’s €6,000
…W140 S-Class that technically drove almost entirely by itself over 1,678 kilometers (1,043 miles) from Munich to Copenhagen back in 1995…achieved a speed of up to 185 km/h (115 mph) while driving by itself on the Autobahn, managing to pass other cars and having little to no human intervention…
Shared ride on a shared charger. Tesla talks nonsense about its dirty, branded, proprietary charging that is unsafe… while the EU has cleanly, quietly and professionally deployed 99% more EV infrastructure.This is great news since Europe is already so far ahead of America on charging deployment and interoperability.
In 2021, the continent had an estimated 375,000 charging stations. …even the most conservative scenario—the EU-27 will need at least 3.4 million operational public charging points by 2030.
Those who did make the mistake of accepting a job from the notorious South African-run abusive brand have reported unfair and chaoticly cruel mistreatment, just like every other Tesla workplace. It’s basically a dead brand, unsafe at any speed.
…alienating its customers, bringing in less revenue, and falling behind legacy carmakers.
