Pirelli puts a wireless sensor in its new tire for the McLaren Artura

Enlarge / The new McLaren Artura plug-in hybrid supercar will be the first production car to use tires with built-in monitoring sensors. (credit: McLaren)

When the McLaren Artura reaches the road later this year, it will do so riding on the world's first "Cyber Tires." Made by Pirelli, the tires feature an evolution of the tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) that are now fitted to new cars. Normally, those sensors are in a car's wheels, but Pirelli has here embedded them in the construction of the tire, where they measure pressure, temperature, and acceleration.

That little snippet of information from the Artura press briefing left me intrigued, if a little skeptical. So I reached out to Pirelli to see if it could convince me that smart tires are a good idea.

"Now we have the technology to install at industrial level a sensor inside the tire and, most of all, integrate the sensor into the car itself," said Piero Misani, Pirelli's senior VP of R&D. "You can put in a sensor, you can put in an app [linked to a tire], but this is not a dialogue between the tire and the car. That is something that is a standalone system. With the McLaren Artura, we believe that we'll be the first to fully integrate a sensor in the tire with the car's electronics."

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