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I saw that several producers are going to put on the market car wheels made of spokes that connect to a tire without an air chamber. The pictures I saw in this article show tires with thin shoulders that are directly connected to the spokes. With such a thin shoulder it will be easy to pick up mud and dirt, are those pictures showing the actual product that will be put on the market or the bare structure? Will they put a membrane on the sides?

If those picture represent the actual product that will be put on the market how will they cope with mud and dirt? Or... how will they cope with sticky and slimy dog poo?

Note: I am not talking about off road. Given the thin shoulder I guess that those wheels will pick up the dirt you can find on normal roads. Plus, between the thinner and denser spokes of some of those design I can guess that the oily sooth will easily accumulate (see the picture of Hankook model).

Note 2:

I see that some users are in a state of denial. They keep repeating arguments of the type: If you say mud and dirt then you must be talking about off road or country side roads or unpaved roads. My motorway here is perfectly clean, no oily sooth, no potholes, no road works.

Since they are spamming the comments I'll avoid to reply. I'll just repeat that I am referring to the normal city roads as you can find in most of the Western world.

FluidCode
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    common sense says that the tires are not meant for mud ... off-road tires would have larger openings – jsotola Jun 21 '22 at 01:54
  • @jsotola In my country roads are not so clean and perfect as in yours. You can find mud and dirt also on normal roads and if there are road works you might have to pass on a muddy section even when it is not raining. This is not a question about off road and this is not a question about exceptional weather conditions. – FluidCode Jun 21 '22 at 14:02
  • @FluidCode What jsotola is saying is that if they are open then they would not be designed for mud and so you wouldn't use them in your country. Not everything is designed to be used everywhere. It is like asking "Wouldn't snow tires not work very well in Africa?" The answer would obviously be: "of course not because the aren't designed for Africa so don't use them in Africa." However, I would think those are just demonstration tires. – DKNguyen Jun 21 '22 at 18:23
  • The deformations incurred will work some out. Can take a hose/pressure washer to them once in a while. Could design covers if necessary. – Abel Jun 22 '22 at 00:28
  • @DKNguyen in very few places could you expect to drive year-round outside cities without encountering mud on the road. In most of those there would be sand. It looks like the development is taking place in the US, UK, and France. I haven't driven much in the former but have encountered significant quantities of mud on roads (deep enough to get into the spoked section pictured in the images in the article) in both of the other 2, e.g. where tractors leave farms; even in cities big building sites can track a lot of of mud onto roads. Your comment that they're demo models is probably closer – Chris H Jun 22 '22 at 15:17
  • @ChrisH I don't know why there is automatically the assumption that a tire has to be made to drive on a country road (after all, entire cars with nearly zero ground clearance do exist). I can drive between cities without ever leaving paved road. – DKNguyen Jun 22 '22 at 16:32
  • @DKNguyen I was only discussing paved roads. We have very few dirt roads in the UK. I live on the edge of one city and the most direct route to the next city would take me along some pretty filthy country lanes, especially after the fields had been ploughed. There are also a few shallow fords I can think of on normal roads that collect muck and gravel at the bottom. Low ground-clearance sports cars would perhaps have to be wary of the fords but would have no trouble elsewhere. After occasional use it might be possible to wash out debris, but that's not much good on a long journey. – Chris H Jun 23 '22 at 08:01
  • ... A target use case is apparently delivery vans, and they have to be able to reach all properties (including, I reckon, farms with decent gravel access tracks) – Chris H Jun 23 '22 at 08:02

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