By Chuck Martin

Goodyear has introduced a two-in-one tire designed for cars that can drive and fly.

The Goodyear Aero concept would work both as a tire for driving on the road and a propeller for flying the same vehicle through the sky.

Spokes in the airless tire would provide support to carry the weight of the vehicle and act as fan blades to provide lift when the tire is tilted, as detailed in a Goodyear video.

The Aero would use magnetic force to provide frictionless propulsion, enabling the high rotating speeds needed to drive the vehicle on the ground and, when the wheel is tilted, lift the vehicle into the air and propel it forward.

“With mobility companies looking to the sky for the answer to the challenges of urban transport and congestion, our work on advanced tire architectures and materials led us to imagine a wheel that could serve both as a traditional tire on the road and as a propulsion system in the sky,” stated Chris Helsel, chief technology officer at Goodyear.

The tire would feature an embedded artificial intelligence processor that would combine information from the sensors in the tire with data from vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.

Goodyear says its concepts are intended “to trigger a debate on the tires and transport technologies for a new mobility ecosystem.” The concept tire is being shown at the 2019 Geneva International Motor Show.