Geely is HI FUN

Geely Motors returned to NAIAS as noted below, and with some interesting new technology. They have managed to get the TPMS system to talk to the ABS system and slow the car in the event of a tire failure. They call it the "blowout monitoring and braking system" or BMBS.

Now, we at VPB wonder if this has anything to do with cheap Chinese tyres, or if it's because Chinese Explorer knock-offs roll just as badly as American ones do when the tyres are not maintained, or if the roads over there are just so darn bad there is no reason to build a 50K mile treadwear tyre.

There's something going on that's more interesting to me. No one in the US has put much effort into a system like this so far, because blowouts are a relatively rare occurence over here. Tyres fail now and then, but they only rarely cause fatal accidents. The Explorer/Firestone issue was defined by improper inflation, not by a badly designed tyre. USDOT and NHTSA standards for tyre manufacture are extremely high and so long as tyres meet them and are used in a manner that the manufacturer considers safe, they hold up until punctured or they just wear out.

With that in mind, I can see the programming of this type of interlocked system being a few bits of code away from ripping off. Geely is making a big splash of it this year - will Ford, GM, and company be far behind with their own systems? How closely will they tread on Geely's "intellectual" property? I put intellectual in quotes because China has a poor track record for observing international patent rules. In other words, which will be the first of the automakers to "steal" Chinese technology, and what will be the result?