The mobility of the future is built along two main axes sustainability and technological innovation.
If for motorists there are still safety and costs in the first place and so are the companies that have the ball in hand.
Pirelli with its Research & Development center in Milan, flanked by 12 other centers around the world, represents the main laboratory and Piero Misani, vice president and head of R&D and Cyber opens a window on the macro-trends to follow.
First of all, the concept of mobility has changed: car sharing and micromobility have shifted the focus on efficiency and reliability over performance, also conditioning those who produce tires.
Research then moves its horizon even further, looking at smart cities and autonomous driving.
For Pirelli, the Cyber project already has its first application.
For the first time in the world, a car is fitted as original equipment with a system consisting of a sensor in each of the tires that collects essential information for driving safety and software integrated into the car's electronics.
It is the McLaren Artura, unveiled this week, a hybrid supercar that produces a flow of information that is partially displayed on the dashboard and central display, others used by the vehicle's electronic systems to calibrate the warning messages according to the specific characteristics of the tire. and also to its state.
It thus anticipates the future of the tire, capable of providing cars with a sense of touch, capable of identifying or anticipating potentially dangerous situations such as loss of grip and aquaplaning, thus allowing the car's electronics to intervene promptly.
The next step will see tires connected to the network, to other vehicles and to the road infrastructure.
Already in November 2019 Pirelli was the first company in the world in the tire sector to share information on the road surface detected by intelligent tires equipped with sensors on the 5G network, presenting in Turin the use case "World-first 5G enhanced ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) services ".
A system in continuous evolution that will become fundamental in parallel with the increase in the level of autonomy of the cars.
In fact, the ability that the driver has today to perceive the grip conditions given by the type of road surface and the weather conditions will have to be satisfied by the tires and the car will be able to slow down if the asphalt is found to be slippery, adjust the electronic controls to increase safety and, with inter-vehicle connectivity, alerting other self-driving cars of potential imminent danger.
A real tactile sense offered by the only point of contact between the car and the road, the tires.
In collaboration with:
Pirelli
