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

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

This characteristic will debut as commonplace tools on a automobile from an unnamed automaker this yr, Sumitomo stated, 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 will probably be accessible within the U.S.

Accidents brought on by unfastened lug nuts have develop into an growing concern in Sumitomo’s house market of Japan, the corporate stated, significantly forward of the colder months when drivers swap over to winter tires. Whereas industrial autos typically have clips to offer visible affirmation that nuts are correctly tightened, this is not a foolproof technique, Sumitomo claims. And passenger automobiles usually do not have them in any respect.

Sumitomo claims the Sensing Core tech is unbiased of the tire make, mannequin, and measurement, permitting it for use with quite a lot of car and tire mixtures. The identical fundamental know-how can be used for different purposes. Sumitomo has additionally used the identical fundamental know-how for an oblique tire stress monitoring system the corporate claims is employed by 15 car producers within the European, Japanese, Chinese language, and Indian markets.

One other potential software is tire-wear monitoring. This may contain sending car information to a cloud to foretell tire put on based mostly on the quantity of utilization. On the 2024 CES, Sumitomo introduced an funding in vehicle-analytics software program firm Viaduct, with the purpose of integrating the latter’s software program with Sensing Core for this objective.