New Road Tubeless Tires Coming In 2011

Road tubeless tires have a very special design.   You can NOT safely ride tubeless on a standard tire and bunch of sealant.   You may get a few miles, but you can suffer a catastrophic blowout with your tire exiting your rim.    Suffice it to say, you always want to buy genuine road tubeless tires when you are planing on going tubeless.  The biggest problem, up until now, is that there was only one company making road tubeless tires for sale in the United States, Hutchinson.   Although they make a great tire, real fans of road tubeless know that the system will never catch on until there are many different manufacturers selling competing products.

The New Kids On The Block

I cam across this article in a Triathalon magazine mentioning all of the different manufacturers that are entering the market for road tubeless.   It is almost a footnote where they say that: "Bontrager is releasing the R4 Tubeless, Specialized is releasing the Turbo Road Tubeless, Kenda is releasing the Kaliente Pro Tubeless, and Maxxis is releasing the Padrone tubeless in 2011."

Bontrager's R4 tubeless is already for sale on their website.   At first glance, it appears that this tire is a re-branded version of the Hutchinson Atom tubeless, and it seems that others have made the same observation.

The Specialized Turbo Road Tubeless may also be available, but again, this is a re-branded version of an existing tire, the Hutchinson Fusion 3 Tubeless.

Maxxis showed off their Maxxis Padrone Tubeless Road Tire at interbike, and has the specs listed on their website.

I couldn't find any information in the Kenda offering.

Finally, IRC offers several tubeless road tires, but not in the United States.   Nevertheless, a certain Japanese retailer has the tires and will ship them around the globe.