If you’ve heard whispers about the “Pirelli Cyber Tyre,” or spotted the news about the Italian manufacturer’s work with Bosch, Pagani, and McLaren, then you may be wondering: What makes the new tire so clever? Smart tires as a concept go back a few years, and Pirelli has a habit of squeezing in tech wherever possible. So, what’s different this time?
Well, plenty of drivers know what happens when you hit a patch of ice, or test your luck through a particularly bad downpour. Your vehicle loses grip and unless you have the skills needed to get it back on track, you’re probably going to wind up pitched into a ditch or headed sideways into a tree. Things like stability control and traction control help a lot, but they can’t do much when you do start hydroplaning.
But it’s the 2020s, and everything seems to be “smart” now. That’s going to include your vehicle’s tires if Pirelli’s current plans continue to develop, and that ultimately means fewer drivers will be sitting in the rain waiting for a tow truck.
Pirelli recently collaborated with Bosch to produce a “smart tire” for the Pagani Utopia Roadster. The premise is simple: The tire gathers information, which it then sends to the car’s ESP control unit. The vehicle can then use that information to adjust for the type of tire being used at a basic level, and vastly improve both grip and safety at the more technical end.
Digital Trends recently sat down with Ian Coke, Pirelli North America’s Chief Technology Officer, and Pirelli North America CEO Claudio Zanardo to get more information on the smart tire and what comes next.
Smart tire provides grip, eliminates slip — in most conditions
Coke started by telling us about the two possibilities the sensor has, and the vast difference between them. He says: “There are two different types of application. You can have a sensor that is just talking to the vehicle and giving it information or you can have a sensor that is integrated into the vehicle’s system where it actually becomes truly smart. So the vehicle is actually reacting to the information from the sensor.
“With the first application, things like tire ID, pressure, temperature were kind of passive inputs. The only good thing about the tire ID is that it will tell the vehicle, ‘I’m a summer, I’m a winter’ and it will set the vehicle up accordingly. If you change the tire over, the vehicle knows when you’ve changed the tires.”
Where it really picks up is when the more advanced sensor is integrated. At its full potential, the tire can relay information to the vehicle in real time, and that information can be used to reduce the odds of the tires losing traction. Coke explains:
“It’s actually measuring every time it goes round how much contact I’ve got. When you know that, and you know the velocity, if you get any kind of slip, you go into an aquaplaning condition, it’s much quicker in taking control of the vehicle. With the sensor, it’s immediate, it’s always real time, and I think that’s the bigger breakthrough at this time.”
So the tire is essentially building on existing stability control systems, which, in most circumstances, are designed to detect things like wheel slippage, understeer, and oversteer before mitigating them through braking, cutting power to a wheel, or sending extra power where it needs to be. Some current systems are exceptionally good, but it’s still possible to break traction on certain surfaces or through the driver pushing a little too far. The new tire should be able to nip things in the bud as soon as any slippage starts to appear.
The partnership with Bosch is vital
While the tire is capable of throwing plenty of information at a vehicle, it’s all fairly useless if the vehicle doesn’t know what to do with it. So, just as tire pressure sensors will only work for vehicles equipped to use them, you’ll need a “smart tire-ready” car should you want to slap some brainy tires on your ride. That’s one of the areas where the partnership with Bosch pays off.
“There are ways you can do it, but the whole reason to go with Bosch, because they create most of the [engine management] systems on most vehicles, is to create a standard way of transmitting it. You can Bluetooth it, you can put a dongle in, you can put your own separate CPU in, you can go off the Cloud,” Coke says.
Unfortunately, if you want to get the most out of a smart tire, jerry-rigging a Bluetooth adapter isn’t the way forward. Transmitting the data from the sensor to the adapter and then to The Cloud and back takes several seconds and makes it all but useless for the smart tire’s main application. The CTO tells us that: “It’s good for passive data, but with active data, you need to be completely logged in.”
Zanardo was also enthusiastic about the “collaboration development agreement” his company has signed with Bosch, saying: “We will develop software and an instrument to apply and use all the data that the sensor is able to take, and develop a new frontier in terms of safety. At the moment, we are studying where we can go with all of this data. Bosch is a perfect partner in order to do that, because we are looking at something completely new. We know the potential; the application is something we’re working out.”
Testing has been pretty tough
None of this tech is brand spanking new. In fact, Pirelli has spent a long time working on it. Part of the reason the Cyber Tyre isn’t widespread relates to the difficulties of developing it. As Coke tells us, that little sensor goes through a lot:
“Having a little sensor with a lot of expensive electronics going round day to day is not easy. Making the robustness in the electronics — how you mount the sensor, how you protect the sensor, it’s going to go from high temperatures all the way to low — it’s part of the reason it takes time.”
Despite the complexity, Coke relays how the tires are being tested to the extreme, and says that they should be able to stand up to even the most extreme conditions. “For our applications you have to go 340 kilometers per hour (211 mph) plus. Getting the electronics to survive in those kind of environments is not easy. High temperatures, high impacts, that’s been the most difficult part for me. That and trying to get a signal from a tire, in rubber, through a vehicle, which are normally very well insulated, into a CPU. That’s the other bit we were working hard on.”
Few early adopters will regularly push their vehicle north of 200 mph, or even have something that can hit those speeds, but knowing that cracking a curb or rolling over a particularly intimidating rock won’t toast your expensive tire tech is pretty reassuring.
Some F1 tech has indirectly gone into the smart tire
Although sensors measuring things like tire pressure and heat are regularly used in Formula 1 testing, that’s not the top-level motorsport tech that has trickled down into the tire.
“The needs are different,” Zanardo says. “Formula 1, you just need to have performance, performance, performance. In this case, you can work with safety, you can work with all of the different aspects of the vehicle. We’re working on a whole different level, it’s a new world. Something completely open. The reason why we decided to go with Bosch is because we want to have something integrated and create a new path of instruments which will be applied to the vehicle.”
However this doesn’t mean Pirelli’s extensive connections to F1 and other motorsports haven’t contributed to the tire’s development. As Coke tells us, the company’s association with top-level motorsport has proved vital when developing a top-level piece of tire tech.
“The ability to take data and then do simulation and monitoring has definitely trickled down,” Coke said. “I don’t think we’d be as advanced today. We get so much data from this stuff [Formula 1], but it’s not the data that we can use; it’s all the different types of applications, the algorithms passed down into the modeling, virtual simulation that we do for all the development.”
Tire is available now, but we’re years from widespread adoption
Want to give a smart tire a try? Well, if you have one of the 130 Pagani Utopia Roadsters that are being built before you can splurge for a set. If you have a somewhat normal production vehicle, then you’ll have to wait a while. But rest assured that this game-changing tech will be on the road within the next few years, and it could be as standard as traction control or anti-lock brakes further down the line.
As for an exact date, there are estimates suggesting the tire could see a more widespread rollout as early as 2025, or in 2026. Zanardo was more vague with an estimate, but still optimistic. “It’s an ongoing process, a journey. The first applications are already there, for example, the Pagani Utopia Roadster. We’re bringing the sensor to other vehicles step by step. It’s a journey, and we think we’re starting a very good one.”