Los Angeles-based SMART Tire is a licensee of spring tire technology developed by NASA. The company was conceived in 2020 as part of the FedTech NASA Startup Program, a private venture program funded by federal agencies and corporate partners to connect entrepreneurs to technologies developed across federal agencies such as NASA.
The founding team worked with inventors at NASA Glenn Research Center to explore commercial applications of this breakthrough tire technology and have raised an undisclosed amount of private funding to bring shape memory alloy tires to market.
Scientists at NASA's Glenn Research Center near Cleveland designed and developed in the 2015-17 timeframe a non-pneumatic tire made of a stoichiometric nickel-titanium (NiTinol) mesh that they envisioned would be used on a possible mission to Mars.
Stoichiometry is defined a branch of chemistry that deals with the application of the laws of definite proportions and of the conservation of mass and energy to chemical activity.
The innovation shown in 2017, called the Superelastic Tire, was evolution of the "spring tire" that NASA Glenn and Goodyear had developed a few years earlier, by the Apollo program's lunar-rover tires.
The Superelastic Tire uses "shape memory alloys" capable of undergoing high strain as load-bearing components, instead of typical elastic materials, NASA Glenn said. This results in a tire that can withstand excessive deformation without permanent damage.
SMART Tire CEO Earle Cole called winning the award a "powerful validation" of his company's shape-memory alloy tire technology.
SMART Tire thus far has concentrated on bicycle and scooter tires, which are scheduled to be launched commercially in 2023 under the METL trade name.
Brian Yennie, chief technology officer, noted that the firm's METL non-pneumatic bicycle tire made from shape-memory alloys, has earned recogniton with R&D 100 and CES Innovation Awards.
Yennie said the firm also is kicking off development of a "rubber-integrated" airless automotive tire made from shape-memory alloys, but the company did not respond to Tire Business queries for further comment.
The company also states on its website that it has opened a 5,000-sq.-ft. research and development center in the Akron area to support U.S. manufacturing. Further details were not disclosed.