"Eco-tyre recharges your car’s battery"

Source: EnergyWise

Researchers in China have come up with a new type of tyre that can tap the static electricity that builds up between it and the road to help recharge a vehicle’s battery.

It has been shown that friction between a car tyre and the road accounts for 5 to 30 percent of a vehicle’s fuel use. Now Ning Wang at the University of Science and Technology, Beijing, and his colleagues have designed a tyre that can recycle some of that wasted energy - that is the static electricity.

Normal tyres are made of rubber and carbon black. Wang’s version swaps the latter for silica resulting in more static electricity generation. Also in the tyres are nanogenerators made of copper and rubber. The electrons that cause the static electricity are captured and sent to the car’s battery. A tyre like this could save 800 kilojoules of energy per year.

New Scientist, 8 December 2018, p 19 cites Advanced Functional Materials, doi.org/cxh9.