The maker of Falken tires has developed know-how to detect unfastened lug nuts, and the corporate plans to debut it on a manufacturing automobile later this yr.

Sumitomo Rubber Industries has introduced the brand new characteristic Sensing Core, which the corporate says can detect lug nuts which can be unfastened by as little as one millimeter, with out the usage of devoted sensors. As a substitute, Sensing Core depends on knowledge from a automobile’s managed space community (CAN), analyzing wheel pace and different elements.

This characteristic will debut as normal tools on a automobile from an unnamed automaker this yr, Sumitomo mentioned, including that the corporate is in discussions with further automakers. The market the place the loose-nut detection characteristic will debut was not mentioned, so it is unclear if it will likely be accessible within the U.S.

Accidents attributable to unfastened lug nuts have develop into an rising concern in Sumitomo’s dwelling market of Japan, the corporate mentioned, significantly forward of the colder months when drivers change over to winter tires. Whereas industrial autos typically have clips to supply visible affirmation that nuts are correctly tightened, this is not a foolproof methodology, Sumitomo claims. And passenger automobiles usually haven’t got them in any respect.

Sumitomo claims the Sensing Core tech is unbiased of the tire make, mannequin, and dimension, permitting it for use with quite a lot of automobile and tire mixtures. The identical primary know-how will also be used for different functions. Sumitomo has additionally used the identical primary know-how for an oblique tire strain monitoring system the corporate claims is employed by 15 automobile producers within the European, Japanese, Chinese language, and Indian markets.

One other doable software is tire-wear monitoring. This may contain sending automobile knowledge to a cloud to foretell tire put on based mostly on the quantity of utilization. At the 2024 CES, Sumitomo introduced an funding in vehicle-analytics software program firm Viaduct, with the goal of integrating the latter’s software program with Sensing Core for this function.