(gel squishing)
(bell dings)
- I know it's hard to tell,
but I'm a little bit older than your average YouTuber.
So when I think of a tire,
this is what I think of.
(scribbling)
Black, circle, rubber.
Turns out, there's all kinds
of crazy futuristic tires.
Some of them aren't even rubber.
Some of them aren't even round.
Some of them
(voice echoing) aren't even of this earth.
Today we're going to cover some of the craziest,
most bonkers futuristic tires
(voice echoing) of today.
I'm James.
And this is The D-List.
A big thanks to Omaze for sponsoring today's episode.
Listen, I love cars.
And if you're watching this video,
you guys probably love cars too.
And I wish that I could give all of you guys a car,
but I'm just one Kentucky Cobra.
And I can only do so much, but thanks to Omaze,
one of you can win a car!
I'm talking dream cars like
Tesla Model X, 4 GT,
or maybe an Audi RSQ8?
And not only does Omaze give you the chance
to win these awesome cars,
it also does it to support a great cause,
in this case, the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA.
They're awesome.
So what are you waiting for?
Go to omaze.com/cars, check out all the sickest sick,
sick stuff that they're giving away.
And maybe you could be the next Donut fan to win.
Check this out, this is Sebastian.
He won the Corvette that we gave away earlier this year.
- You're kidding.
There's no what?
- You won.
- Holy crap.
- You could be next!
What are you waiting for?
(babbling)
Let's go!
Burnouts.
They're fun.
But, they come at a cost.
Tire tread, ie. money.
It's just what happens.
You want to do some smokey donies?
Then you're gonna lose some rubby dubbies,
them's bricks, kiddo.
But what if you could regrow
your tires?
Well, looks like the good folks at Goodyear had a good idea.
- [Narrator] Goodyear recharge.
- Goodyear Recharge uses a little pod,
full of liquid compound, that's as strong as spider silk,
the strongest material in nature
next to no one's chest hair.
You put your pod of your choice
into the center of the wheel, and then, that's it.
The tire uses whatever pod that you put into it
to regrow the tire.
This opens up the possibility to not only
eliminate the need for buying new tires altogether,
but you can choose
what kind of rubber you want to put in your tire.
You go into a track day, great.
Let's put that super sticky one in there for the weekend.
You're hitting Moab, you're gonna go camping with the boys?
Awesome.
Get yourself a knobby pod.
Do not eat your pods.
Not even for the memes.
Michelin has been making rubber for the road
since the 18 fricking 90s.
That's a hundred years before Post Malone was born.
They were the first company to put air
(chuckling) into a tire,
and then put it on a car.
That's called a pneumatic tire.
But what happens if you don't want to fill
your precious tire with sticky, musty,
boring air?
Well let's just say this next tire,
real breath of fresh air. (tapping)
- [Narrator] Michelin Uptis.
- Okay, Uptis stands for unique puncture-proof tire system,
and it looks like it's from the 2490s.
500 years after Post Malone was born.
Sick, instead of air, this thing uses
poly-resin spokes,
that provide the same level of resistance
as a pneumatic tire.
And I know what you're asking.
Why, James?
What's wrong with air?
Well, the first reason is pretty obvious.
There's no air in the tire, so if you get a hole in it,
you're not going to get a flat.
That's great.
But the reason that I was surprised about,
and I'm probably more excited about,
is that it's better for the environment.
(chuckling)
Michelin says that around 200 million used tires
are thrown into the trash every year,
which is the same weight as 200 Eiffel Towers.
You guys were not aware, Michelin is a French company.
French companies apparently measure things (chuckles)
in how much the Eiffel Tower weighs.
Since it ain't got no air in there,
there's effectively 0% chance of over or under-inflation,
so they will last for a way longer time.
And what's even cooler,
is that we might see these things on the market by 2024,
they're already driving around on them, testing them,
which is great because, the way things are going,
(laughing) we probably won't have any air by then.
If you type the phrase "weird tire"
into your Google machine, which is exactly what we did
when we decided to make this video,
this is one of the first ones that's going to show up.
- [Narrator] Goodyear Eagle-360.
- How's he crab-walking,
ooh, better get out of the way of that bus.
Oh, just right on the water.
They're balls?
What?
As you can see, this is one of the weirdest tires
ever conceived.
Just like the earth, okay.
No rim, all tread.
You might be saying, "Kentucky Cobra.
"How the heck in fricking heck is a spherical tire
"gonna mount onto the car?"
Let me do some math for you.
Magnets! (dramatic music)
Yeah.
Fricking, the entire tire has magnets built into the rubber,
so that the entire car is able to hover over the tires,
making it essentially
the Disneyland monorail of tires.
And because it's a sphere, it can rotate in any direction,
giving you the most traction when you need it.
And also, that makes it wear down more evenly.
So you don't have to rotate your tires,
your tires are constantly rotating themselves,
you saw it in the video.
They did a great job.
The car got clear.
We saw it move around.
Amazing detail.
Who made that. (laughs)
DARPA, DARPA, DARPA, DARPA, DARPA.
This one is one of the more bad-ass ones.
And uh, it's actually kind of scary.
It's actually real.
Just like Transformers.
And the Ninja Turtles.
Who are not nice, at all,
no matter how they are depicted in the cartoon.
(chuckles)
- [Narrator] DARPA shape-shifted wheel.
- This tire is made by a group called DARPA,
which sounds kind of silly.
But then, you learn that DARPA stands for
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
and it all becomes very terrifying.
You might know them for this terrifying robot dog,
that they made with Boston Dynamics.
And um,
also,
they invented the internet.
Yeah.
This internet.
And they also invented these sick tire wheels.
Basically, at the flip of a switch, the tire goes from being
a normal, pretty bad-ass-looking round tire,
to a triangular tank track,
in literally two seconds.
I know what you're saying.
"James, do we need triangular wheels?"
And I have one thing to say to you.
I forgive you for asking such a stupid question.
The contact patch of a triangle is way larger
than on a round tire, and as a result,
you get some serious grip gains.
So basically, any car can be a tank.
All things to the power of triangles.
And this guy is doing it right, too.
You gotta do back round,
front triangle.
That's how you roll around.
Tank you very much.
Next tire.
- [Narrator] Kumho E-Nimf.
- Okay, this next tire isn't the craziest one on this list,
but we wanted to include it
because it's called the Kumho E-Nimf.
Basically, it combines the sustainability and longevity
of an airless tire, with the comfort and performance
of a regular pneumatic tire, remember that from before?
It's kind of like the Uptis that we talked about before,
but it's called the E-Nimf.
(chuckles)
There's something you guys might not know about me.
I love dandelions. (gentle music)
I love the fact that they're yellow.
I love that you can pick one up and put it behind your ear
and look fantastic.
I love that they make any romantic comedy scene
look more romantic.
I love their natural Fibonacci petal structure.
I love that when they get older,
they turn into a little fluff ball
that you can make a wish on.
But the thing I love most about dandelions is apparently,
you can turn them into tires.
And Continental is doing exactly that.
- [Narrator] Continental Taraxagum.
- You didn't know making a tire is a pretty insane process
and can cause a lot of environmental damage.
Nolan did a deep dive on that entire subject,
and you should check it out, it's a very good video.
I will put the link to it at the end of this one.
And that's where the dandelions come in.
Okay, Continental discovered that
a Russian species of dandelion
contains a natural latex in the root.
Okay, this latex offers the same performance
e and usability as today's tires,
and dandelions grow seven times faster than rubber trees.
And you can plant them anywhere,
because they're literally a weed.
So just imagine a beautiful tire manufacturing plant
surrounded by huge, beautiful fields of Russian dandelions.
We call 'em plant plants. (gentle music)
You park your car and you frolic right in,
scan your badge, go to work.
Let's get it going.
We saved this one for last because it is literally
the most insane tire in this world.
And also,
(stammers) Mars.
- [Narrator] Goodyear slash NASA memory alloy tire.
- Space freaks have been trying to make cars
that drive on Mars since the 70s,
but one of the biggest problems, surprisingly,
has been the tires.
The current Mars Rover uses lightweight aluminum,
which worked for a while, but turns out,
just like calling people simps, Mars is toxic.
And after a while the metal tires start breaking down,
which is not good when you think about
how the Mars Rover costs around
(echoing) two and a half billion dollars.
So Goodyear, good old Goodyear, and NASA,
went back to the old drawing board,
and they came up with a pretty good solution.
To look to the future, they look to the past.
Talking chain mail, man.
The new Mars Rover is going to have tires
that are made out of metal.
It's called nickel titanium alloy,
or nitinol, because NASA loves to shorten stuff.
Not only is nitinol stronger,
but it's lighter than a normal tire,
which is really crucial in space travel.
Every ounce counts.
But metal still gets brittle at low temperatures,
which might make it easier for metal to break.
True, except that this metal has a little trick
up its little metal sleeve.
The thing about nitinol is,
(whispering) it's magic.
It's got this thing called shape memory,
which basically means that
no matter how the metal gets bent or twisted,
it can return back to its original shape
if exposed to the right variables, for instance,
temperature or pressure,
two things that are in extreme abundance
on Mars, okay.
NASA and Goodyear programmed the nitinol tires to reform
to their original shape when they're on the surface
of the red planet,
allowing the tire to maintain its original shape
after being put under stress.
So, now, when the little Mars Explorer gets into a pickle
with some big Martian rocks,
not only will these bad boys glide right over top of 'em,
but, they ain't breaking down for nobody, man.
I wish I could reform into my original shape
after I get all twisted.
This was kind of a fun science-y one,
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Let us know if you want more fun science-y stuff.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button,
hit that like button,
it's how we know that we're doing a good job.
Like I said,
check out this episode of Wheelhouse on tires,
and check out this episode of Bumper To Bumper,
about an AI-designed car.
Bye!
I love you.