Great WSJ article:
Nov 22,2000
Firestone Recall Drives
Interest in 'Smart' Tires
By Timothy Aeppel
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Tires can be made to do amazing things. They can sense a drop in their internal pressure and automatically pump in more air. They can be built to run safely for miles after a blowout and to signal when they're leaking. They can even link to the Internet.
Now, thanks to the Firestone fiasco, drivers may actually start seeing some of these things, beginning with pressure monitors.
In the wake of Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.'s massive tire recall, Congress has mandated that within three years all new cars will be outfitted with warning systems to indicate to the driver when a tire is significantly underinflated. Low inflation is considered a major factor in tread separations that have been linked to 119 deaths in the U.S. and more than 40 overseas, mostly on Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer. Underinflated tires build up levels of heat that can damage the internal structure of a tire.
But this is just the tip of the tire-technology iceberg. The day may be coming when people view tires as they do the maze of parts under the hood: far too complicated by electronics and other gadgetry for a layman to fiddle with.
That's quite a switch. Until now, not many consumers or car makers have been willing to pay extra for fancy tire features. Indeed, tire makers have struggled to sell new safety measures to car makers, who have repeatedly balked at the increased cost, leaving proven technologies languishing on shelves and in laboratories. Now that Congress has weighed in, car makers have no choice.
Pressure monitors have existed for decades. Congress tried to require them after an earlier Firestone recall in the 1970s, but that initiative was dropped by the Reagan administration as part of its effort to streamline government regulation.
Some cars are sold with monitors, but it's hardly widespread. Systems are also available that can be added to existing cars. But until Firestone's problems, few car makers thought of the feature as something that most buyers cared much about.
"It's one of those driver-convenience, security-type of features that we've quietly installed and not done much about on the marketing side," says Terry Rhadigan, a spokesman for General Motors Corp.'s technical center in Warren, Mich. GM figures about a third of its 2000 model-year cars have some type of pressure monitor. The systems are sold either as standard equipment or included in a package of features, so there isn't a specific price tag attached to it, Mr. Rhadigan says.
Monitors come in many forms. Some are as simple as a flashing light on the dashboard or a buzzer, while others allow a driver to scroll through the various tire positions and see a digital readout of the tire pressure on each of the four tires. Some integrate the display in the overhead console, while others put the display in the dashboard or even the rearview mirror.
Some systems use radio waves sent directly from the tire to a receiver viewed by the driver. Others piggyback on a vehicle's existing antilock braking system and are simply programmed to watch for subtle changes in the speed a tire is spinning, which can indicate changes in tire pressure.
Bob Ellis, vice president of product marketing and brand development for auto-parts supplier Johnson Controls Inc., says his Milwaukee company has seen a surge of interest on the part of car companies in monitoring technology since the Firestone recall. "Auto makers want to do something very quickly," he says.
Johnson Controls will start selling a system in January that can be retrofitted to existing cars. The system requires installing sensors on each tire and a special rearview mirror that integrates a battery-powered monitoring display into it.
"Future generations will measure a lot of other things besides pressure," such as the load being carried by each tire, Mr. Ellis says. Too much weight can increase the stress on a tire and elevate the temperature of the materials that make the tire. Heat can break down the bonds that hold the tire's components together.
Schrader Electronics, part of Britain's Tompkins PLC, sells a monitoring system built around a special air valve. The next generation of the valves, according to the company, will measure the temperature of the air inside a tire, thus keeping an eye on the heat, as well as its pressure. "We'd like to think that in the future we'll have sensors in different parts of the tire" such as the tread and the sidewall, says Carl Wacker, a spokesman.
There are even more things on the drawing board. Cycloid Co., a tiny company in Cranberry, Pa., has developed a device about the size of a hockey puck that monitors tire pressure and keeps it at a preset level. The company already sells a version for trucks and is working with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which holds a minority stake in Cycloid, to develop one for cars.
Grant Renier, founder of the company, says his system could even transmit information about an emerging tire problem directly to the Internet. Drivers "would get a call on their cell phone, with a human voice telling them the location of the nearest service station," Mr. Renier says.
Run-flat tires are another technology getting a boost from the Firestone recall. France's Groupe Michelin SA sells a system that, after alerting the driver that a tire has developed a flat, uses a special insert and a distinctive tire design that allows a vehicle to be driven up to 125 miles at 55 miles per hour afterward.
"By 2010-2020, the aspect of a consumer changing a tire will be gone," says Robert L. Carroll, vice president of marketing at Michelin North America Inc., Michelin's U.S. subsidiary. People will simply drive to the nearest service station to get a tire repaired.
Michelin's tire will be standard equipment on the Cadillac luxury roadster that General Motors will unveil in mid-2002. It is Michelin's first sale of the technology in the U.S.
Until now, tire makers found it difficult to sell run-flats. They were hampered by the relatively high cost of such tires and resistance from car makers, who have reservations about the new technology.
At a recent tire-industry conference in Akron, Ohio, a series of engineers from various manufacturers presented their varying versions of run-flat tire systems. But then representatives of GM and Ford got up and noted that, among other things, the new tire systems can have an adverse impact on ride and handling.
Daniel Haakenson, a product-development engineer at Ford, told the group that Lincoln Continentals are offered with run-flat tires for an additional $640, but only 1.8% of consumers choose the option. He said the price of run-flat systems would have to drop by more than half before a large group of consumers would opt for it. Tire makers insist that, as is the case with any new technology, price will go down as volumes increase.
Write to Timothy Aeppel at timothy.aeppel@wsj.com |
