Bridgestone

Bridgestone shows off small airless tires

If you've had one too many flats, take a look at these small airless tires that Bridgestone is showing off at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

The Airfree concept tires have resin spokes that radiate from the rim to the tread, curving to the left and right to better support vehicle loads.

They're only 9 inches across, but have been successfully tested on single-seater electric carts in Japan that are often used by elderly people.

While the tire won't suffer punctures, it's also completely recyclable. The spokes are made of thermoplastic resin, which can be reused along with the tread rubber. … Read more

Bridgestone's $36.6-million investment will boost truck and bus tire production

In order to meet consumer demand for truck and bus tires, Bridgestone Americas announced it will invest $36.6 million in its Warren County, Tenn., plant. The investment will boost production to 900 truck and bus tires a day, the company said in a press release.

Bridgestone's planned expansion is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2013, and will create 50 new jobs, the company said.

This is one part of a $1.2 billion investment Bridgestone is making in its U.S. manufacturing operations. The company is also expected to create more than 900 new jobs … Read more

Bridgestone tablets are huge because they can be

With Bridgestone's new AeroBee line of tablets as large as 21 inches, the "Texas effect" has finally hit the tablet market.

That's when companies take an existing product or concept and blow it up to a point at which it becomes so big as to be impractical, just because they can...kind of like so many oversize Hummers on the streets of suburban Dallas or Houston.… Read more

Al Unser, Jr. pilots Zap Alias to X Prize finals

With a little help from Al Unser, Jr., electric car-maker Zap this week will move onto the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize finals. Unser will pilot Zap's spiffy three-wheeled sports car, Alias, thanks in part to the latest generation of Firestone Firehawk tires.

The X Prize is a global competition that started with 142 competitors. Zap was one of the first group of teams that entered, signing on back in June 2007.

A series of scored performance and evaluation events began on April 26, 2010. Currently, 13 teams with 15 clean, production-capable vehicles remain in the competition. The vehicles … Read more

Tiremaker Bridgestone develops flexible e-book reader

When not making tires, Bridgestone is working on e-book readers so flexible they'd probably survive being driven over. They've even got a prototype ready for testing, but no plans to commercialize the slender and bendy device at this point.

The reader (press release in Japanese) is definitely slender, as it's almost half as thin as a Kindle 2. It's said that it can be "bent to some extent since the circuit board and the electronic paper are flexible," but no one is saying how much "to some extent" is. No matter. While … Read more

BOL 1093: E-book Mania

MySpace and Facebook are hooking up? In a way. Maybe. But the real meat of the news today is all the e-book hype. Barnes and Noble will sell the Que, Bridgestone has a color one coming out, and Barnes and Noble may not always have its own Nook eReader. But does anyone want them?

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MySpace and Facebook? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10383501-36.html

Google Voice makes steps to work with your phone number http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10383573-248.html

Microsoft pulls out … Read more