"How one man reinvented the wheel"

There were several good responses in the comments section, this one covered part of the problem.

One problem is that if the article's camber tire tread is parallel to the ground during normal driving, it will be just as nonparallel to the ground as a normal cars tire during hard cornering...nothing gained.

A conical shaped tire (yes, that is a conical shaped rolling surface on the tire in the article) will tend to roll in a circle instead of going straight down the road. It will take additional toe out to keep the tires from scrubbing while being driven in a straight line and that still won't completely fix the wear problem.

The traction gains shown in the article are statistically insignificant until he switches to a type R compound. Then the gains are no bigger than to be expected from switching a conventional tire to a type R compound.

Variations on that non-sense have been tried before, either the guy is clueless or just out to grab some investors money.

 

That's the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. I can only hope Jalopnik posted it for a little comic relief.

But, it inspired me! I think I'll patent a square wheel so cars won't need parking brakes.

 

True story. I was sitting in a design review once when one of the Manufacturing Engineers suggested we use square road wheels on our tracked vehicles because they would be cheaper to manufacture (relax, he was joking).

One of the suspension Design Engineers took him to task by saying, that's a dumb idea, they will thump 4 times per revolution... paused a few seconds and said, make them three sided and they will only thump 3 times per revolution.

At least they were joking, unlike the conical tire guy and the tools that wrote the article.

 

And this has...what...to do with the Gen III Prius main sub-forum?

 

Since that thread had nothing to do exclusively with the Gen III Prius, shouldn't it have been created in FHoPancakes?

 

I didn't mean this thread we're posting in right now. I meant this thread.

(Note: tongue planted firmly in cheek)

 

Camber:

 

Clever.

He deserves to make oodles of money.