Sharing data from tire sensors could make commutes safer, shorter and greener

Posted: February 24, 2025

Even if you don’t drive, you’ll probably benefit from digital car tires. The newest tire designs embed tiny sensors in the treads that monitor temperature, pressure, acceleration and tread depth. Vehicle manufacturers are using that data to make combustion engines more efficient and extend the range of electric vehicles, which will mean greener roadways for all of us. Going beyond simply notifying drivers when tire pressure is low, sensors can also now share data in real time with the brakes and transmission to reduce the risk of accidents from slippery or unstable road conditions.

By reducing the risk of accidents, data from tires could help make roads safer and less congested. By crowd-sourcing tire-data from multiple vehicles, drivers could get real-time updates on road conditions—be they icy, bumpy or smooth sailing.

Tire manufacturer, Michelin, is helping pave the way by making its tire-sensor software vehicle- and tire- agnostic, so your smart tires can help improve the performance of any vehicle.

The benefits for efficiency and safety are so significant that tire sensor companies are talking about sharing their technology with other manufacturers.

“This is the future,” says Pierangelo Misani, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at the tire manufacturer Pirelli. “We are the first one to have it, but we don’t want to keep it only for ourselves. It’s a way to improve safety and has to be available also to others.”^[1]

Pirelli Cyber Tyre prevents hydroplaning

Tire manufacturer Pirelli and tech firm Bosch have collaborated to design an ultralight sensor that can monitor everything from tire pressure, temperature, acceleration—and how much a tire is slipping on the road.

The main engineering challenge was to design a sensor that’s durable enough to take the extreme forces inside a swiftly rotating tire pounding against the pavement, but still light enough so as not to throw off the tire’s balance.

The result is a 0.3g sensor embedded in the tire rubber. It runs on a battery and transmits data to the car’s antilock braking system (ABS), electronic stability program (ESP) and traction systems via low-energy Bluetooth. The battery saves power by only powering on when it’s in motion. Eventually Pirelli and Bosch hope to recharge it using the kinetic energy of the wheels themselves, much like a wristwatch battery.^[2]

The most dramatic advantage of the Pirelli system is its ability to prevent hydroplaning, when water or ice on the road causes tires to lose their grip. As soon as the tire senses hydroplaning, it transmits data to the car’s stability and traction systems so they can take action.

“It’s actually measuring every time it goes round how much contact I’ve got,” Pirelli North America’s Chief Technology Officer, Ian Coke, told Digital Trends. “When you know that, and you know the velocity, if you get any kind of slip—[if] you go into an aquaplaning condition—it’s much quicker in taking control of the vehicle. With the sensor, it’s immediate, it’s always real-time, and I think that’s the bigger breakthrough at this time.”^[3]

Pirelli’s CyberTyre is currently available on the Pagani Utopia Roadster—but that car will set you back a few million dollars. It will likely be several years before you see similar tires on more conventional vehicles.

Michelin’s smart tire software enhances grip and efficiency

With the right software, even relatively simple data from tires can do big things. Tire manufacturer Michelin reported in December that it has reduced braking distances up to thirteen feet by using software that transfers data about tire grip in real time to the braking system.^[4]

The company has already made a name for itself with software like SmartWear, which predicts tire wear down to the millimeter by combining data about tire pressure and temperature together with vehicle speed, wheel speed and rotations-per-minute.^[5] Other manufacturers are starting to follow suit and are planning to roll out sensors that compute tread-depth this year. ^[6]

This sort of wear information is particularly useful for maintaining entire fleets of vehicles. Many tire manufacturers now offer “tires-as-a-service,” providing real-time tire data to vehicle fleet managers over the web so they can perform predictive maintenance and monitor the safety of their fleet. Optimizing tire performance across an entire fleet optimizes fuel efficiency, which can add up to big savings when multiplied across large numbers of vehicles.

Tire data can also help discover new ways to improve vehicle performance. When testing its SmartWear software with a private taxi company, Michelin noticed that one taxi started experiencing less wear on its tires than it had before—which usually doesn’t happen. It turned out the taxi had a new driver, whose driving was extending the lifespan of the tires, suggesting that tire data can help identify more—or less—efficient driving behavior.

Continental’s ContiSense and ContiAdapt: Real-time tire monitoring

If you want to see even further into the future, Continental Tires has put out some cool concept tires. Instead of relying on Bluetooth, like the Pirrelli tires, Continental’s ContiSense concept tires imagine using electrically conductive rubber to send signals directly through the tire to receivers in the car. The sensors continuously monitor tire temperature and tread depth and notify the driver if these fall outside of optimal parameters. Any punctures of the electrically conductive rubber close a circuit, which sends a warning to the driver so they can take action even before the tire starts to lose pressure.

Continental’s ContiAdapt concept technology adjusts the structure of the tire in response to sensor data in real time. Micro-compressors in the wheel adjust tire pressure in response to sensor data, changing how much of the tire makes contact with the ground. If sensors detect that tires are slipping on the roads, the compressors will reduce the air pressure, increasing the tire surface that contacts the road so that the car maintains better grip.

Tires like this that can change shape in response to sensor data are probably even further out in the future. But they wouldn’t be possible without the advances in data collection and processing that are starting to roll out over the next few years.

^{[1] https://www.popsci.com/technology/pirellis-cyber-tire-technology/
[2] https://www.motortrend.com/features/pirelli-cyber-smart-green-tire-technology/
[3] https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/pirelli-cyber-tyre/
[4] https://www.michelin.com/en/publications/group/brembo-and-michelin-join-forces-to-innovate-boosting-safety-and-driving-comfort
[5] https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/michelin-knows-exactly-when-your-tires-will-wear-out
[6] https://www.continental.com/en/press/press-releases/20240829-tread-depth-measure/}