It is heartening to hear that tire manufacturers are making performance improvements that may reduce the energy requirements of tires, but does that make them green? Not unless we know what chemistry is going into those supertires. Tire already include a toxic soup of carcinogens, reproductive toxicants and other nasty chemicals that get readily disbursed into the environment through high speed road wear. To add more chemicals - or worse untested nanomaterials - to this soup may only be trading evils.

One more reason we need to apply radical transparency to product selection so we can fairly evaluate the trade offs.

Of course ultimately the only green tires is one on a mass transit vehicle.

"by increasing rolling resistance along with bettering or not harming the other parts of what is called the 'magic triangle...'

As the end of the article states, Inflation Air Pressure is probably the main cause of poor vehicle mileage. My own 2 hybrid vehicles with real-time MPG feedback, bear this wisdom out in real life. I air the tires up, I get 7-8 mpg better instantly.

Hmm, the Nanoprene invention sounds like it could be a problem in the environment as tires made of this material will also wear down, releasing ecologically questionable nanomaterials in the form of tiny rubber particles onto roadways where it will wash into rivers and/or be sucked into other vehicles in traffic, polluting the air which human passengers are breathing. This stuff likely won't biologically break down in the environment... and spreading it into the ecosystem is not going to be a good idea. How would you like to be a fish with nano-materials stuck in your gills? It will be like a micro version of the mid-pacific gyre of floating plastic. See Algalita Marine Research Foundation for more info on that one...

How many millions of tons of tire rubber are dispersed on US roadways and environment each year? I know there's tons of lead from tire weights too. I am glad new car makers and European users have phased out lead tire weights, and can't weight (ha ha) for the US to follow suit. For the same basic reason, the weights fall off and are ground to bits on area roadways, polluting water, soil and air with toxic lead.