Hyundai patented wheels that can close their own spokes at speed

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation hold a newly issued U.S. patent for a car wheel that can close the gaps between its spokes with a rotating ring of blades. The idea is to seal the wheel face for less drag on the highway and reopen it to let air reach the brakes, all without the structural spokes moving at all.

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The grant is U.S. Patent 12,779,902, titled “Wheel and vehicle including the same,” and it lists Ju Ho Kim and Eun Sik Kim as inventors. Carscoops reported it as granted on Nov. 3, and the Official Gazette entry carries that date in its address. A patent is a legal claim, not a product announcement, so nothing here says the wheel is headed for a showroom. Hyundai and Kia, which share the assignee line on the filing, have not announced a vehicle program for it.

The filing began as a Korean application and reached the American patent office on May 20, 2024. Carscoops wrote about the design in its Nov. 5 report, describing a separate assembly that sits behind the conventional spokes. That assembly has a central ring and several blades, and rotating the ring one way slides the blades behind the openings between the fixed spokes, which closes the face of the wheel.

Rotating ring and blades behind fixed spokes

Claim 1, as shown in the Official Gazette entry, describes a wheel disk with a hub, spokes and a rim, plus an opening and closing member that controls the openings between the spokes and a driving unit that rotates it around the hub. The member includes a rotating ring and blades with a bent end portion. Turning the ring back hides the blades behind the spokes again, restoring the open face. The spokes themselves never move, which keeps the load-bearing part of the wheel conventional and confines the novelty to the mechanism behind it.

The actuation options are broad. According to Carscoops, the patent contemplates electric motors, hydraulics or pneumatic actuators, and also a shape-memory alloy part that changes length when electrically activated and can push the assembly closed. A spring or elastic mechanism pulls it open again when the actuator lets go. A small control board mounted inside the wheel would manage the whole system, which implies a way to receive speed data from the car or to act on its own sensors. The patent text summarized by Carscoops does not say which.

Aerodynamics versus brake cooling

The Energy Department notes in its alternative fuels data center guidance that only about 12% to 30% of the energy put into a traditional combustion engine goes toward propulsion, so every drag saving counts. Hyundai estimates that wheels and tires account for roughly 25% of a vehicle’s aerodynamic resistance at highway speeds, per the Carscoops account. That would make open spokes a meaningful drag source, which is the reason for the blades. Federal fuel economy guidance shows how much resistance matters at speed: fueleconomy.gov says gas mileage usually decreases rapidly above 50 mph and that a blunt roof cargo box can cut highway economy by 6% to 17%.

Closed wheel faces carry a penalty. They restrict airflow to the brakes, which is why the design lets them reopen. Electric cars add a wrinkle, since regenerative braking reduces the load on friction brakes and could let the wheel stay closed longer, a possibility the reports on the patent do not discuss. Brake cooling matters most around town and on long descents, according to the report, and a wheel that stayed shut during a mountain grade would be a hazard rather than an efficiency gain. The patent’s value lies in the ability to switch, and its reasoning is the same one behind active grille shutters, which close at speed to cut drag and open when the engine needs air.

Gaps in Hyundai’s patent filing

Several answers are missing. Hyundai has not said what speed would trigger the closing, how much drag the system would remove, or whether the added blades, ring and electronics would weigh enough to cancel the gain. Rotating mass and unsprung weight are costs, and the filing does not quantify them, so any efficiency claim remains an estimate rather than a measurement. Wheel covers and aero inserts already exist on production cars, but they are fixed; a wheel that opens and closes would add moving parts to a component that sees salt, grit and potholes.

The earlier published application, number 2025/0196531 A1 and dated June 19, 2025, shows the work claimed priority from Korean Patent Application No. 10-2023-0180556, filed Dec. 13, 2023. That timeline puts the idea at nearly three years old, and the patent’s grant on Nov. 3 follows a published application that had been public for about 17 months. Whether Hyundai or Kia builds it is unknown, and no vehicle program has been named, so the open question is whether the wheel ever leaves the patent drawing.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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