Time honours Goodyear Air Maintenance Technology as 2012 'Best Invention'

The USA's Time Magazine has awarded The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company’s Air Maintenance Technology (AMT) with the title of one of its "Best Inventions of the Year 2012”. AMT is designed to help drivers maintain optimal tyre pressure, helping to increase the longevity of the tread and the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. All of AMT's components, including a miniaturised pump, will be fully contained within the tyre. Time's technology editors listed AMT alongside the Tesla Model S electric car amongst others as one the year’s 25 “most important innovations.”

“As soon as the pressure in these Goodyear tyres gets too low, they know it,” Time’s editors wrote about Goodyear’s AMT. “An internal pressure regulator opens to allow air to flow into a pumping tube, and as the wheel turns, the flattened part helps squeeze air from the tube through an inlet valve into the tyre.”

“We are honoured to be named as one of Time magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of the Year 2012,’” said Goodyear chief technical officer Jean-Claude Kihn. “This award recognizes the outstanding work of our engineers in and , as well as our efforts to bring innovative new products to market.

“A tyre that can maintain its own inflation is something drivers have wanted for many years,” Kihn added. “This is the kind of technological breakthrough that people will recognize.”

Popular Mechanics and Car & Driver magazines have both previously presented AMTwith awards; in October, Popular Mechanics named AMT a 2012 Breakthrough Award winner, while in December 2011, Car & Driver selected AMT as one of its 10 “most promising future technologies.”