Goodyear is testing out a smart tire with a fleet of semi-autonomous electric cars, according to a recent release.
The tire company is reportedly equipping Tesloop, a city-to-city mobility service that works only with Tesla electric cars, with wireless sensors in its tires to help enhance tire management and uptime and for its fleet.
“We want to build the future, not just observe or read about it,” said Chris Helsel, Goodyear’s chief technology officer, in a release. “As the new mobility ecosystem continues to take shape, we are taking steps to match the pace of technical change in the transportation industry and develop tire innovations that meet the intelligence of the vehicles riding on them.”
The wireless sensors are able to measure and record tire temperature and pressure. The sensors are connected to Goodyear’s cloud-based proprietary algorithms, which aim to improve fleet operations and try to guess when the tire needs to be serviced.
Goodyear also has plans to extend its mobile fleet solutions to passenger cars. The company will offer tire maintenance while Tesloop cars are parked at charging stations during downtime, the release said.
“When you are operating cars nearly 24/7/365, minimizing tire incidents is critical to the customer experience and the business model,” Tesloop’s CEO Rahul Sonnad said in the release. “The possibilities for data-driven tire diagnostics are remarkable and promise to help a business like Tesloop operate more efficiently and make our vehicles the safest on the road.”
Tesloop is in charge of a fleet of Teslas, which are each on the road for about 17,000 miles per month. Goodyear has reportedly been paired up with Tesloop since January of this year in order to analyze the effect of autonomous technology on tires.
This project comes after the tire company release Goodyear Proactive Solutions for truck fleets, which utilize advanced telematics and predictive analytics technology in an effort to gain better fuel efficiency and find problems with tires before they occur, the release said.
Goodyear is also working with several carmakers to get tire statistics to vehicle control systems in order to better performance and improve safety features.
“Goodyear is breaking new ground with the combination of fleet management expertise, intelligent products, and a vast service network to deliver complete solutions for the future of mobility,” Helsel said in the release.
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