Hankook Tire Co. received the Bronze and Finalist awards at the 2017 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) for their Flexup and Shiftrac concept tire designs.

IDEA is an annual international design competition sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and judged by design experts across the globe.

Receiving the Bronze award, the Flexup design acts as a one-person vehicle/tire that can access obstacles such as stairs and speed bumps in cities with narrow roads. To navigate these areas, the tire features treads that expand or contract and can reach a speed of 35 km/h.

The Shiftrac design received the Finalist award. The Shiftrac is a hyper agility tire concept that is designed to perform smooth and agile driving in a large city. The tire features block shifting or skating principle pushing outwards, allowing strong cornering and fast lane change, Hankook said.

The tiremaker collaborated with the University of Cincinnati through Hankook Tire’s Design Innovation 2016 sponsor program to design and produce the concept tires.