Tubeless Tyres Set For Breakthrough

TAIPEI, Taiwan – The first road win on the professional circuit for commercially available road tubeless tyres took place last March at the ‘Omloop Het Volk’. The technology is not widely used for road bike tyres, although the French tyre manufacturer Hutchinson has been producing tubeless tyres and Shimano the appropriate rims for a couple of years. But all this is about to change very rapidly.

During the Taipei Int’l Cycle Show (13-16/3/2008) Japanese tyre maker IRC released their new tubeless road tyres while Corima released its new tubeless road rims for tubeless clinchers, all using the Shimano/Hutchinson sizes. With that a de facto standard for road tubeless has been created which resolves one of the disadvantages of tubeless tyres & rims; the lack of standardization. It's expected that now the direction is indicated in which way the wagon is moving; other tyre and rim makers are to follow.     

But that’s not all. The company that has been pushing tubeless for years, Hutchinson, is currently working on a similar tyre technology to be used for city & trekking bikes. Hutchinson’s Marketing Director Eric Vanhaverbeke says in an interview with Bike Europe: “Consumers do not want to pump up their tyres and are looking for a no maintenance solution. It will be our answer to the problems and high costs of maintenance faced by bike rental systems like Vélib.”

More on the breakthrough of tubeless road tyres in the May 08 issue of Bike Europe.