McLaren may soon begin produced lightweight wheels inspired by the root systems of trees, according to the firm’s design director Frank Stephenson.
While visiting Australia for the opening of a dedicated McLaren dealership in Melbourne, Stephenson revealed to Motoring that wheels of the future could have irregularly shaped and mismatched spokes just as trees have roots which shoot out in all directions and at differing angles.
Beyond making wheels look very different to how they do currently, such a change would allow the company to develop thinner and lighter spokes as curved or bendy spokes dissipate energy from the road more efficiently than straight spokes.
“What you do is you get very curvy or very bent spokes. And what that allows you to do is when the wheel gets hit, instead of the impact going straight to the centre of the wheel, it dissipates much sooner. So you can make the spokes a lot lighter, a lot thinner. Then, what you need to do is counter-balance the wheel, obviously, but you can do that behind the spokes.
“So what you have is a wheel with all different-size-looking holes in the wheel. They’re very unusual looking; it’s a lot lighter, a lot stronger,” he said.
The forward-thinking designer said that in the future, wheels will look very different to how they currently do, meaning in the coming years, we can expect to see some very intriguing wheels from the British automaker.
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