Israeli company’s technology provides insights when rubber hits the road

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Front tire tread

Whether you live in Michigan and potholes frequently wreak havoc on your wheels or you live elsewhere and your tires get a more standard amount of wear and tear, it would be helpful to know when one of the most important parts of your vehicle is giving out.

This week, Tactile Mobility launched a measurement technology that can derive insights about a vehicle’s tire tread deterioration from data collected using vehicle sensors.

The Israeli company said its technology uses vehicles’ existing sensors to collect metrics about wheel speed, wheel angle, RPM and other variables.

Using this information, the company can generate real-time insights about the vehicle’s tire-tread depth and, ultimately, tire health for automakers, suppliers, fleet managers, auto repair shops, insurance companies and even the drivers.

Tactile Mobility is “developing a comprehensive suite of automated tire health monitoring capabilities which addresses all major tire conditions affecting vehicle safety including tire stiffness, tire type mismatch, tire blowout prediction and more,” the company said.

Monitoring these metrics and tire-tread depth in real time could improve safety and help connect drivers to in-vehicle safety alerts and repair shop referrals. It could also help operators optimize their fleet management or provide data insights for insurance companies so that they can customize customer plans based on personalized risk profiling.

“To prioritize driver and passenger safety, it’s critical that vehicles contain cost-effective, virtual sensors that not only estimate tire tread depth in real time, but also inform drivers when it’s time to replace their tires,” Boaz Mizrachi, Tactile Mobility chief technology officer, said in a statement.

— Alexa St. John

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