Researchers Develop a Tire Prototype with Replaceable Treads

Once upon a time, if the soles of your shoes wore out, a cobbler could attach fresh soles. Nowadays, once your sneaker soles wear out, you junk them.Tires are the same. It’s insane that we have to throw out a tire because that tiny percentage of material around the perimeter has worn down, but that’s the established convention.Even worse, tires are a major source of microplastic pollution. When the treads wear down, that material doesn’t just magically disappear; it sloughs off as microplastic particles. The ones that don’t make it into our lungs accumulate in the environment, settling into soil or waterways. Have you ever seen a farm next to a roadway? What do you think is making its way into those crops? Gas-engine cars and EVs alike are microplastic-spewing machines.Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain are trying to solve both problems. Their ECOTIRE prototype is a tire with separately molded treads that are mechanically attached to the casing. This means that once the treads wear, they can be popped off and replaced.The tires can be mass produced. The researchers developed these molds:The technology means that manufacturers could select “more sustainable and biocompatible materials” for the treads. The team has been experimenting with silicone rubber treads, finding the material offers roughly ten times less deterioration that conventional rubber. (I.e. they still shed microplastics, but far less.) Promisingly, in testing they’ve found the ECOTIRE behaves much like a regular tire. “The behavior of our tire is already similar enough to that of conventional tires that we are very close to transferring it to the industry alongside companies in the sector,” says researcher Daniel García-Pozuelo, “although there is still a long road ahead before it reaches society.”