I suspect these are going to be much more sensitive to overloading than normal tires since they're gonna be specifically matched to the vehicle weight (unlike a pneumatic tire which can carry far more than vehicle but is simply inflated to a specific pressure for NVH/handling) you can't just air them up by a few pounds. You can't add more pressure to a non-pneumatic tire so it's simply going to deform more and generate more heat if you add more load. There's no good way around that.
One of the nice things about a pneumatic tire is that you can air down if you need low ground pressure. I guess that goes out the window too.
These will probably work really well in some use cases but barring some massive groundbreaking improvement I wouldn't expect to see these replacing conventional pneumatic tires over the next decade or two.
Edit: I'm talking about these tires in the general case, not specifically as they exist on a Bolt.
> I suspect these are going to be much more sensitive to overloading than normal tires since they're gonna be specifically matched to the vehicle weight (unlike a pneumatic tire which can carry far more than vehicle but is simply inflated to a specific pressure for NVH/handling) you can't just air them up by a few pounds.
Interestingly, there's only 845lbs wiggle room on these tires as installed on the Chevy Bolt assuming the standard Bolt configuration at 3,563lbs and the carrying capacity of the tire at 1,102lbs. After accounting for your average American family of four (or just the weight of two men and two women) at 728lbs, you're left with 117lbs for the fifth person or belongings.
...so even if they're prototypes, I hope they've been over-engineered. That said, I want them to succeed.
800lb is a perfectly normal capacity for anything built on a passenger car platform. Considering the bolt is a subcompact I'd actually say having ~800lb of "OEM approved"[0] capacity actually seems pretty good. I suspect most of that stems from having to build a beefier car to carry around those batteries 100% of the time while not having an unreasonably short service life for suspension components.
In showroom configuration 99.99% of vehicles are only spec'd with tires that barely exceed the GWVR.
That said, with a pneumatic tire you can just air it up higher than the OEM tells you to and you're good for more GVW at the expense of the tire wearing faster. Obviously you need to be reasonable about it but tires are pretty durable even over their stated weight rating as long as you don't run them hot (airing up reduces flex therefore reducing heat).
It will be very interesting to see if they come out in other sizes/capacities. They already make similar tires for off road use but they aren't suitable for road speeds (go figure)
I can imagine these being great for non-loading city vehicles. Something like a small hatchback generally only has a weight differential of few passengers, fuel, and some shopping bags. For something larger like a pick-up or 7-seater I'd be sceptical.
Good observation, but I wonder how many drivers actually do that? Increase tire pressure when they are planning to travel with a higher load? I'm guessing under 5%, the others will just accept the higher tire wear and fuel consumption, or, more likely, be completely oblivious about it...
One of the nice things about a pneumatic tire is that you can air down if you need low ground pressure. I guess that goes out the window too.
These will probably work really well in some use cases but barring some massive groundbreaking improvement I wouldn't expect to see these replacing conventional pneumatic tires over the next decade or two.
Edit: I'm talking about these tires in the general case, not specifically as they exist on a Bolt.