Car Tires

30-11-23 00 / episode: 318

Olden days

The first car tires were wooden and steel, rather like carriage wheels. Then the first pneumatic tire was made for bicycles in 1888. Later it was used for cars and proved invaluable for the development of the modern car travelling at the speeds that it does.

Introduction

Hi and welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode 318. These podcasts are a great source of vocabulary for your extensive listening practice. Today we're going to talk about car tires.

All seasons

With the pneumatic tires came rubber tires, and they were made for different seasons. In fact many places still use different tires in different seasons. Then the all season radial tire was made so we don’t have to keep changing and storing these tires. It’s cheaper and takes a lot less space.
Someone then made bullet proof tires like for spies. There are actually all kinds of bullet proof tires and they all use different technologies.

Fuel Efficiency

Tires as it turns out are super important for improving your car's fuel efficiency. To use the expression where the rubber hits the road, that's where we lose a lot of our energy due to friction and it can use up a lot of your fuel without making you go faster or farther. So there's been lots of research put into making better tires that are more fuel efficient. And better wheels in general. Let's just say that the wheels today are incredibly efficient compared with those from 40 or 50 years ago. But I think that they were going to find a way to make them even better in the future.

Space buggy

Now there are airless tires that they can use for the space buggies that they plan to use on the moon. They are truly airless and so would be considered the best bullet proof tire.
They have super elastic tires that use shape memory alloy. I found out about these space buggy tires in a video on YouTube on the Veritasium channel. I highly recommend viewing that video if you want to see about these tires because they do an excellent job of showing them and describing how they work..

Invincible

The technologies for bullet proof tires and the airless tires could combine to make a really invincible tire. But invincibility depends on what is attacking you. If someone uses a big enough weapon they can destroy the whole vehicle, not just the tires, so I think bullet proof tires is largely a waste of time.
Better to not be a target in the first place, if you can.

If you like listening to English for your extensive English listening then hit the Subscribe button below so you can get more of my podcasts. I’d love it if you made a comment below, too. Tell me about the tires on your car and what you think of the airless tires.