Tire company Sumitomo hasn’t reinvented the wheel, quite, but it has come up with a pretty brilliant way for your car’s tires to recuperate a bit of energy as they roll along. Developers at Sumitomo Rubber Industries got a hand from researchers at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan to develop a tire concept that uses a device called an “Energy Harvester” to gather small bits of static electricity (a.k.a. “frictional charging”) generated within the tires. Inside the tire are two layers of rubber with an electrode for each, and a negatively and positively charged film that interfaces the two and rubs together when the tire rolls down the road and repeatedly deforms. Now, these tires aren’t going to add range to the next-gen Tesla or anything, but Sumitomo suggests the Energy Harvester could eventually replace batteries as a power source for small things like tire pressure monitors or “other automotive devices.” The Japan Science and Technology Agency, a national research and development agency, has recently signed on to help support the project, so it may not be too long before they roll out some sort of
Origin: This new tire concept captures electricity as it rolls