And thus eliminate changing a flat tire?
Even though todays suspension technology is advanced enough to deliver superior ride quality in most vesicles there are limitations that it cannot surpass. The pneumatic tire provides the vehicle the first line of defense against road irregularities. It's deformation begins the process of absorbing energy created in the vastly changing and challenging road/tire environment. Without a device like this, the suspension would have to work much harder in making your ride smooth. Therefore to eliminate the tire we would need a comparable device that would deform enough to accommodate our, sometimes not so nice, roads. Think about how uncomfortable it is riding over rocky terrain on Rollerblades. In addition the deformation aids in traction, braking, and helps to level out the car. I agree that a new technology should be nearing marketplace but, it has to be cost effective to a overtake an industry 100 years old.
Probably not any time soon. Your air filled tires are part of the suspension. The Tires themselves absorb bumbs in the road. Just like any air filled ball or ballon would
this could be interesting as a theoretical question, but practically it is irrelevant we don't need pneumatic tires, they are just the best choice given all the cost and functional paramaters the real question is, can today's suspension tecnology using solid tires, provide a more economically competitive, more reliable, more comfortable ride flat tires are a failure mode fancy suspension technology also has failure modes if you could cut failures in half, for double the cost, would it be worth it? what if you could cut failures 90%, but the ride was 50% bumpier the answer is, NO, the reason we have the suspension tire systems we have is because that is the best value right now there are engineers all over the world trying to get the upper hand in car technology by coming up with something better when they get something enough better, cheaper, smoother, etc that it will help sell a car, it will be on cars in no time
