Students Design The Tire Of The Future For Hankook Contest

There are plenty of design contests out there to design cars and other products of the future. When it comes to designing cars of the future most designers are caught up in high tech gadgets inside the car and advanced powertrains. Most of those futuristic designs don't put much though into what tires will be like in the future.

Hankook tires holds a Hankook tire Design Challenge every couple of years and 2014 was a contest year. This year the contest was held with students from the University of Design, Engineering, and Business in Pforzheim, Germany submitting entries.

Student's from the Master of Arts course for Transportation Design participated in the contest. The winning tire design is an interesting product that is design of on and off-road vehicle racing applications. The first prize went to a design called Dakar by Samir Sadikov. The tire is made of individual interlocking hexagonal bricks with each brick holding its own air.

When on the road the bricks lay flat and when it goes off-road, the bricks open up to provide more traction. While the concept is interesting, it appears that no indication of exactly how the bricks would move was given. Each individual block can be replaced in punctured.

SOURCE: Gizmag