Bridgestone reveals airless tyres for future rovers
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
Japanese tyre-producing giant Bridgestone has won a prestigious industry award for an airless concept designed specifically for rovers that have yet to be launched. No, not the Viking-badged, walnut-and-leather-lined Rovers formerly of the British Midlands — we’re talking bespoke rovers for exploring the surface of the Moon and planets beyond.
Showcased at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs during April 2025, Bridgestone’s AirFree design was lauded as Tire Concept of the Year at the Tire Technology International Awards for Innovation and Excellence a month earlier.
Conditions on the lunar surface require tyre technology that’s far removed from the norms of earthly vehicles, where space rovers are required to cope with the rigours of unmetalled terrain covered in a blanket of regolith — in the Moon’s case, that’s a fine sand of widely varying depths across its bedrock.
Courtesy of its near-century-long legacy as a tyre manufacturer, Bridgestone has inevitably fostered a wealth of engineering expertise that led it to produce two versions of its AirFree concept with different requirements in mind.
Whereas road cars' tyres are constructed using natural and synthetic rubbers, together with other materials for reinforcement, and designed to hug a metal wheel with the enclosed space between inflated with air, Bridgestone’s AirFree concept consists entirely of metal components.
From the central lightweight hub a series of twisted blades form spokes that connect it to the sectional metallic tyre, the sides remaining completely open rather than being sealed to contain pressurised air.
Instead of the grooved treads for dispersing rainwater or snow found on conventional road tyres, these AirFree concepts use connected metal plates to form a circle. Each tread section can be covered with a textured material for traction with spaces between allow the surface sand and other small debris to pass through the wheel.
Replicating how off-road driving enthusiasts reduce their tyre pressures to make them more flexible and increase their grip, the Bridgestone AirFrees are designed to compress around the shapes of their tricky lunar terrain, all without the risk of punctures let alone damaging cosmic ray radiation.
All this is very clever but lunar exploration isn’t something many of us get up to at a weekend — so what’s the benefit here on the third rock from the Sun?
Right now, not a lot, but as an integral part of Bridgestone’s research and development efforts, the money invested into it has to justify itself be positively impacting the firm’s bottom line in the future and not simply basking in the marketability of its accolades today.
Bridgestone’s official line is that it ‘aims to apply [AirFree] technology refined in the extreme lunar environment to tyres used on Earth, thereby contributing to further value creation.’. In other words, expect to see further evolutions of this technology in the future — as for when and for what kind of vehicles remains unclear, but we’ll continue reporting further developments [coughs] tyrelessly.
Why am I not able to have a puncture repaired on my run flat tyre?
