The verge is completely wrong in this headline.
They wrote "are now available to buy".
No. It's a Kickstarter that might ship next year. The headline should have been "Bike tires made from NASA’s bizarre shape-shifting metal might be available to buy next year if the crowdfunding campaign isn't a scam"
No. It’s a Kickstarter that might ship next year. The headline should have been “Bike tires made from NASA’s bizarre shape-shifting metal might be available to buy next year if the crowdfunding campaign isn’t a scam”
The second I see the words "kickstarter or indiegogo" I already know whatever I saw may as well be unobtanium
If it makes its way to a storefront then I'll consider it, otherwise I'll just move on and keep my money
Tbf if it's indigogo, it's a scam. If its funding is flexible, you might as well just throw your credit card into the trash bin. If it's on kickstarter, you might at least get some product an few years late (or it's just a normal pre-order with some extra steps and more expensive)
In this case it's almost flexible funding. They set a ridiculous low target, $25k. That wouldn't pay any tooling.
I never looked at their campaign, but did just read over it for fun. I didn't do any further research and just assume no lying in the parts that can be checked without having knowledge about their specific products / industry.
First things first: It's kickstarter, not IGG. It's not using flexible funding (as that's only on IGG, if they still allow it). They have a working prototype. That's nice!
Having won all these awards is nice, but without knowledge about the specific awards, this information is useless. They seem to have a contract with NASA which gives them access to materials and technology. That's a plus. They also seem to have a real working prototype.
$25k as a target is very low for product development. But they may be an established company and may get extra funding from other sources, so it might be a campaign to check the market and do some PR. Remember how I said many Kickstarters are essentially preorders? They're not quite there yet in the product development cycle, but this might explain it with other funding besides kickstarter. But this should be researched further before backing.
The whole campaign feels more PR and sales as I've seen with the last campaigns that I actually backed (or at least checked because of an interesting "product"). I can't help but it somehow reminds me of something...
Also after all this talking about space technology, they say it wouldn't work on earth and needs to be adapted (so no space technology anymore, but still space technology?). I get that they need to do this and that its a bit unfair to point at it, but did chuckle when I read that. Especially when they continued talking about space technology right after.
I was wondering the whole time, whether their tires really last "the whole lifetime of a bike". I usually change tires, because they're worn out and the profile is low. Modern tires are quite good at preventing a flat. So the upside of this tire for me would be... no checking if I need to refill some air. They prevent this by making this part of the tire exchangeable (and if it works, $10 is fine as it's still cheaper than a regular new tire). But then... it lasts the lifetime of your bike, but not specific parts of the product.
How easily can you get access to these spare parts after the campaign? How much trash are they really saving? And as they're saying their approach is more environmentally friendly - did they research all the new materials used and their production?
So, for me it's a product I wouldn't back on KS. It's a product, that would require me to get spare parts to be used meaningfully. It needs to be established on the market for that. Otherwise it's nice in the beginning and then it was a waste of money.
Oh, speaking of money - I didn't check yet how much id have to pay for a ti... WHAT? $500 for two of them? 2 Full wheels are starting at $1,300 and can be up to ~~$2,300~~ $5,000 depending on your choice of material?!
I can get a fully featured, brand new luxus eBike for that!🤯 Nah, not gonna happen. Talk about the environment as much as you like. A full set of good tires with anti-flat technology for my bike starts at around 40-50 bucks (non US, but shouldn't be that different in the US?) and lasts a while. I can get 10 sets of tires for the price of this starter set and I'd probably get a few more when I have to pay for a few Tread replacements in between. Talk about the lifetime of a bike. LOL.
Maybe checkout crowdsupply. They have a 100% successfull fulfillment rate.
Available to buy, not to have. Hah
~~might ship next year~~ won't ever ship
FTFY.
This is just Kickstarter scam #362646683 that takes people's money and then... well, profit that's it. They won't ship products because they don't have products, they don't have anything
There have been solid, foam filled or gell filled bike tires for a long time.
The fundamental problem is that the ring of pressurized air in a pneumatic tire is a shock absorber. When you hit a bump the entire tire (even the part that isn't touching the ground) contributes to the dampening because it turns into a shock wave in the donut of air. When you switch to any sort of tire that doesn't have pressurized air in it, the dampening can only occur by deforming the tire in contact with the ground, and it's not going to be anywhere near as good. Typically you end up with a tradeoff between uncomfortable ride on the one side, and bottoming out on the rim and lots of rolling friction on the other.
I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I’m willing to give these a chance. If they can make tires that are almost as good as air ones but require less maintenance, they’ll be worth it for some people. If those metal rings aren’t too stiff, it should work.
10 mins of internet relevance, a lifetime of obscurity and never being mentioned again
If we could all be so lucky.
Everybody pay attention to this guy for 10 minutes
And at only about 10 times the cost of traditional bicycle tires, you’ll only need to not replace your tires about 11 times for this to be cost-effective!
Give it a decade and economies of scale, and maybe it will get it down to twice as expensive.
Lost me at "the first consumer product we’re aware of to use nitinol".
There were nitinol eyeglass frames back in the 1980s.
My handheld radio antennas are nitinol, I can bend them to fin in a bag or tie them in a loose knot and they don't deform.
That they’re aware of?! This just reads like they didn’t bother to do any research.
Just use schwalbe marathon. They are puncture proof and last forever. I once got home and picked a shard of glass as king as my fingernail out of one.
...king?
I think he meant wing
Nah, must’ve been thing
My money's on bling.
Zing you peasants
I do everything on a roadbike and fixed gear, which are claimed to have the highest risk of getting a flat tire.
I usually have 2 flats a year which cost around 6€. I usually get a new pair of tires roughly once a year "just to be safe" when i notice the rubber showing oddities or they start losing grip a little. I usually go for continental GP (4kII/5k) tires if they are discounted and pay roughly 80€ for a pair.
I'm curious to see if this "no flat" tire will be cheaper and if it can be run tubeless.
I don't believe they have air in them but I'll believe the claims when I see it.
Other note. Tannus tires are fine if you want that sort of thing.
Well, as to the last point the metal is providing internal rigidity, so that's why there's no inner tubing.
But agreed. I cannot see this trumping my replacement costs during my lifetime. It's cool, and it might be more environment-friendly, but cost/benefit calculation says no.
Despite all of the "this is new" in the article, nitinol has been around for a long time. I have a great set of small split rings made of nitinol from at least a decade ago. Wish I could get more of them.
Pretty sure this was on US Dragons Den and it got laughed out due to the cost. I'm like, yeah cost is pretty high initially but when the hell we gonna move on from rubber?
There is still rubber even with these.
You do realise that stuff grows on trees, right?
You do realize harvesting rubber from trees means lots of cut down trees in the Amazon, and most rubber in tyres is actually synthetic
People these days pay more for bike tires than car tires these days already. There are $10k bikes now. Seems there's no amount of money some people won't pay for bike parts these days.
Wonder if they'd work as skateboard wheels, that'd be pretty sick
Dude! Those are the first step to getting the skate wheels from Snow Crash!
I hope they are not called T(ires)1000 :)
That would be a pretty funny movie if the terminators were all bike tires.
Get the star of the movie Rubber to play all the parts like a Eddie Murphy movie.
And it can be called "The tireminator" :)
100% a scam.
No one is ever getting a product from this.
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