Bridgestone developing airless tires for cars... And bikes, eventually?

[sgtslag]

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/12/09/bridgestone-developing-airless-puncture-proof-tier/?test=faces

This would be a leapfrog jump in bike safety, to have airless tires.  Unfortunately, M/C tires are a niche item -- it may take a while for them to appear on the bike market.  It could allow tire prices to drop, though, so it really has a lot of potential.  Cheers!

[Piute]

  Early  morning drive out on the beach(damp),afternoon to get back to road we would take air out of the tires to drive across the now dry sand.Guess we'd be stuck on the beach .                                          
                                                     "What a beach"

[TOOLS1]

Didn't they have airless tires a hundred years ago? I know I have read where tires with air was a big deal in the early part of the 20th century. Who knows, maybe they had it right the first time, but I would think the next logical step would be air without tires.
TOOLS

[LukeM]

Chances are your Huffy tricycle when you were very VERY young had airless tires.  They called them pneumatic tires back then: almost all rubber.

I recall some bicycle manufacturers making airless tires for road bikes.  Not so much for the racers (too heavy, I guess) or the off-roaders (not enough give, maybe?).

Luke M

[MarkPBG]

They did, but the old airless tires were made of all sorts of materials, and most of them were rubber. But since they were solid and hard, they gave a very rough ride. The pneumatic tires aided suspension with a better ride. The modern airless tires…variations on the "tweel" concept, are as forgiving and have as good handling characteristics as the pneumatic (air filled) tires. It is a leap forward over the old designs.

according to Wiki…the first pneumatic tire was invented and patented in 1846!