RoboTire aims to ease pain of hands-on tire changes

Franchised new-car dealers have grown their share of the replacement tire market from almost nothing 20 years ago to close to 10 percent today.

With more than 280 million vehicles on American roads, that means the nation's 16,752 dealers are now selling millions of tires each year in the service lane.

But those increased tires sales have caused some problems, too. Dealers, already struggling to fill vacant technician jobs, now are competing with independent tire stores for experienced help. And dealers are seeing tire technicians suffer more on-the-job injuries. Replacing tires on vehicles 8 hours a day is a strenuous physical job. On vehicles such as heavy-duty pickups or SUVs with 22-inch tires, each tire and wheel assembly can weigh 90 pounds or more.

Some semiautomated tire-changing equipment now available, such as Hunter's Revolution, is helping to reduce repetitive stress injuries. But technicians still have to remove the wheels and tires from the vehicle and carry them to the machine.

Changing tires could get faster, safer and easier if a Detroit startup company called RoboTire can perfect its automated tire-changing system.

Founded by a software engineer named Victor Darolfi in 2018, RoboTire uses the same robots automakers do on vehicle assembly lines to automatically remove the wheel and tire assembly from the car. Depending on the version of the RoboTire system, the tire can be transported to a Hunter Revolution machine automatically. A human will still need to load the tire and wheel, but the Hunter machine removes the old tire and installs the new one once it is loaded. The wheel also is balanced by the same machine.

"It takes a human typically about an hour on average to [change] a set of tires. RoboTire can do it in 25 minutes or less," Darolfi said.

He said his system can increase throughput by around three times what most dealers normally do. Another big advantage, Darfoli said, is dealers will find it easier to hire help for their tire sales operations.

"The No. 1 reason why dealers and tire stores are interested in this robotic system is technicians," he said. "We've eliminated so many technical schools that we just are not training high school students any longer. So this is a new way to attract talent that wouldn't have considered the automotive field. Maybe they have no desire to work on tires, but they are interested in robots.

"This is their entry into the robotics world."

The RoboTire system is only programmed to work on domestic and Asian cars, SUVs, crossovers, minivans and some pickups. The company is working on adding European vehicles to its list of vehicles, a process that may take a couple of years. Heavy-duty trucks also will be added.

One of the first RoboTire systems is being tested in a Discount Tire Store near Scottsdale, Ariz. The system takes up about a service bay and a half of space and contains a ramp with a lift and one robot on each side.

The robots are equipped with cameras that identify the vehicle and size of the wheels.

RoboTire demonstrated the system recently at its suburban Detroit engineering center.

A car is driven up the ramp and an operator makes sure the blocks for the lift are correctly positioned under the vehicle's frame rails. The operator raises the vehicle and that's when the robots take over.

They remove the wheels, unscrewing the lug nuts one by one and placing them in a special tray. An operator takes them to the Hunter tire changer — or with a more expensive system the tire is transported to the Hunter machine.

While the wheels are off the vehicle, a technician makes sure the brake pads, rotors and suspension components are in good condition. Once the new tires are mounted and balanced, the robots reinstall them, tightening the lug nuts down to factory specifications.

RoboTire is working with Hunter Engineering Co. of Bridgeton, Mo., to ensure the robots and the Hunter tire changers can exchange information seamlessly.

Hunter's vice president of marketing, Pete Liebetreu, said that while there is no financial deal between the two companies, RoboTire's and Hunter's technologies are complementary. If RoboTire's system takes off, it will help sell more Hunter machines, he said.

Darolfi would not give a specific cost but said the price of the system varies from six figures to purchase it outright to between $15,000 and $20,000 per month to lease one.

The idea for RoboTire, he said, was borne out of a frustrating visit to get his own car serviced.

"In 2018, I sat at a service center for three hours and hated every minute of it," Darolfi said. "I thought to myself, 'Look, we use these robots in factories to put wheels on cars on the assembly line. Why can't we bring this to the auto repair industry?"