PumpTire - The “Self Inflating Bicycle Tire.”

PumpTire - Believe it or not, I have actually read complaints from people on cycling forums where they whine about having to pump up their tires once a month.
Presumably these slobs never wash the dishes, either.
Or even get out of bed.

But while I can’t fix their filthy kitchens, I can point them to the PumpTire, the “Self Inflating Bicycle Tire.”
This Kickstarter project is ingenious. The tire has another thin tube running around the outside. As you ride, this tube is squeezed agains the tire and air is squished out. Inventor Benjamin Krempel says it is like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. This air is then passed into the innertube via a specially designed valve assembly, and once the desired (user-selectable) pressure is reached, the valve shuts off.

The tire itself is actually connected to this valve, which is how the air gets from the length of thin pump tube into the innertube itself. You won’t be pumping up a tire from flat this way, but as long as you remain puncture-free, you’ll never need to top up the tires again.

I can’t see myself bothering with this. It’s easier to carry a small pump in my bag along with a spare tube.
But I can totally see something like an electric bike coming pre-fitted with these tires.
I doubt electric bike riders are the kind to do their won maintenance anyway, so this could be a good fit.

Imagine taking your bicycle out of the garage and never having to fill up the tires or even check the pressure. Or imagine yourself being able to change your tire pressure on-the-fly with a simple adjustment from the handlebars. Our project is to bring two self-inflating bicycle tires to market, the City Cruiser and City Pro. Both tires are intended for the urban cyclists and both tires incorporate the patented PumpTire technology.

How the Money Will be Spent
We are looking to raise $250K to make PumpTire a reality.  This is a large sum of money for Kickstarter projects and equates to about 5,000 tires.  The money will be primarily used for four purposes:

1. Completing the engineering design. This will require us to work with vendors and engineering firms to find the right materials and processes to make the product robust and lightweight. Although we have various working prototypes, we’ll need money to make sure each part of the system works properly.

2. Testing. Once we’ve completed the production design we will build and test prototypes to see what we got right and what needs additional engineering.

3. Purchasing tooling.  We will need to have molds built for each type of tire as well as the lumen and the individual pieces in the control valve assemblies.

4. Purchasing materials.  And finally, we need to pay for the materials and components that go into each tire assembly.

We are very excited about the technology and bringing these products to market. By pre-ordering your PumpTire on Kickstarter, you're helping to make this technology available to everyday bikers, commuters, professional cyclists and bike enthusiasts everywhere!