Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology Honoured By Time

MEDIA RELEASE
20 November 2012

Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology Named One of 2012’s Best Inventions by Time magazine

The Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Company’s Air Maintenance Technology has been named one of Time magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year 2012.”

Each year Time magazine’s technology editors list the year’s “most important innovations.” This year’s list includes 25 inventions, which in addition to Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology, includes NASA’s Z-1 space suit, the Tesla Model S electric car and indoor clouds.

Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology (AMT) will help ensure the optimum tyre pressure is maintained and as a result, could mean substantial savings at the fuel pump. All of its components, including the miniaturised pump, will be fully contained within the tyre.

“As soon as the pressure in these Goodyear tyres gets too low, they know it,” the Time editors wrote about Goodyear’s AMT. “An internal pressure regulator opens to allow air to flow into a pumping tube, and as the wheel turns, the flattened part helps squeeze air from the tube through an inlet valve into the tyre.”

“We are honoured to be named as one of Time magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of the Year 2012’,” said Goodyear’s chief technical officer Jean-Claude Kihn. “This award recognizes the outstanding work of our engineers in Akron and Luxembourg, as well as our efforts to bring innovative new products to market.

“A tyre that can maintain its own inflation is something drivers have wanted for many years,” Kihn added. “This is the kind of technological breakthrough that people will recognise.”

Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology is currently under development by Goodyear in Akron and Luxembourg and is not yet available for purchase.

Time joins Popular Mechanics and Car & Driver magazines in recognising Goodyear’s innovative Air Maintenance Technology. In October, Popular Mechanics named AMT a 2012 Breakthrough Award winner. In December 2011, Car & Driver selected AMT as one of its 10 “most promising future technologies.”

A full list of the 2012 Time magazine “Best Inventions of the Year 2012” is available in the November 12 issue or online at http://tiny.cc/gv2cnw.
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