Michelin executive: Tweel not ready for passenger car market

The president of Michelin North America says air-filled tires still perform better on passenger cars in some respects than do Michelin's new airless tires, but the airless technology, called Tweel, is still evolving and no one knows what the future holds.

For now, Michelin is selling the Tweel for use on front-end loaders and commercial lawnmowers and developing it for all-terrain vehicles, all of which are more vulnerable to flat tires than passenger cars, said Pete Selleck, who is also chairman of the tire maker's Greenville-based North American operations.

Selleck, a former Army officer with engineering and business degrees from Clemson University and the U.S. Military Academy, was on hand Thursday to help dedicate the world's first Tweel plant.

The $50 million factory, Michelin's 10th in South Carolina, is located off of U.S. 25 in the Moonville area, about a mile from the research center where company engineers Tim Rhyne and Steve Cron invented the Tweel beginning in the late 1990s.

Michelin says the tire/wheel combination retains some benefits of an inflated radial tire, such as improved traction and longer wear, but never goes flat since it doesn't need air.

Selleck told The Greenville News that the Tweel is a "real game-changer" for operators of small front-end loaders called "skid steers" and commercial lawnmowers because they get flat tires once a week on average.

Drivers of passenger cars, on the other hand, have flat tires on average once every 70,000 miles, he said.

For them, Selleck said, the air-filled radial tire, which Michelin invented in 1946 and continues to perfect, still performs better in such areas as comfort and fuel efficiency, particularly at high speeds.

But he said Michelin would continue to develop the Tweel for use in any future applications that make sense.

"Over time we'll put both technologies in competition with each other and the best technology will win," he said.

Selleck told Michelin employees and guests at the plant dedication that company engineers think Tweel might be useful in some "developing economies where bad roads dictate slow-moving passenger cars."

"And that can lead the way to broader passenger car applications," he said.

Joshua Summers, an engineering professor at Clemson University who has conducted federally funded research on the Tweel, said Michelin has faced a variety of obstacles in bringing it to market, including safety regulations designed for air-filled tires and developing a cost-effective way to manufacture for the mass market.

Summers said he thinks the Tweel eventually will be used on passenger cars, maybe starting with electric vehicles.

"I think fundamentally it is a better mousetrap, and I believe we will see a shift, but it will be a long-term shift," he said.

Ralph Dimenna, vice president of Michelin Tweel Technologies, said the company has sold several thousand Tweels for use on front-end loaders through retail outlets in the United States and Canada since first putting it on the market two years ago — all that it's been able to produce with equipment for making prototypes.

At Snider Fleet Solutions, a tire dealer along U.S. 25 not far from the new plant, the Tweel for front-end loaders costs about $1,200, a lot more than the $200 to $800 charged for a conventional radial tire, said Seth Murphree, the store's commercial service manager.

Murphree said he thinks the higher price is justified because the Tweel reduces downtime from flats and doesn't require maintenance.

"Also they ride a lot better and they absorb shock pretty well," he said.

France-based Michelin Group has a long history of successful innovations such as the super-wide, fuel-saving X-One truck tire, whose sales the company says have exceeded two million units since it was introduced in 2000.

Not all of the company's inventions have met expectations, however.

Ron Adner, a business professor at Dartmouth College, cited Michelin's PAX run-flat tire system as an example of innovation failure in his 2012 book "The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss."

Motorists who get a flat while driving on PAX tires can continue driving for up to 125 miles. Michelin introduced the system in 1998 with ambitions of transforming the industry.

Adner argues in the book, however, that Michelin didn't sufficiently take into account the effect on service garages, which needed to buy new equipment and undergo training in order to repair the high-tech tires.

Eventually, consumers grew frustrated with the difficulty of finding garages that could repair the tires and some sued, according to Adner and reports in the trade press at the time.

In 2007, Michelin announced a halt to further development of the PAX.

"What had started as an 'inevitable success' ended as a massive corporate write-down," Adner wrote.

Adner told The Greenville News, however, that he thinks Michelin might have more success with the Tweel, which strikes him as a "more self-contained innovation."

"It's also interesting that they are following more of a niche deployment strategy, rather than a full-blown mass market strategy," Adner said.

Selleck, asked about the PAX experience, said Michelin learns as it innovates "and as we have successes and failures we apply those lessons to the next steps."

Michelin wouldn't say exactly how many people would work at the 135,000-square-foot plant, citing a concern that competitors could benefit from the information.

An incentives agreement that Michelin struck with state officials refers to 45 jobs that the company would create at the plant in exchange for tax credits, said Allison Skipper, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

Kevin Landmesser, vice president with the Greenville Area Development Corp., Greenville County's economic development organization, said the county agreed to reduce the assessment ratio applied to the plant for property tax purposes from 10.5 percent to 4 percent for 30 years.

In exchange, he said, Michelin agreed to make $150 million in capital expenditures and create 125 jobs over a decade.

However, Michelin is allowed to spend the money and put the jobs at any of its facilities in Greenville County, Landmesser said.