Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. will be placing RFID tags on all tires shipped to Wal-Mart. Goodyear will be complying with the previously-announced Wal-Mart mandate requiring RFID for its top 100 suppliers by 2005.

Interestingly, Goodyear will be placing RFID tags on each tire, instead of on pallets and cases as Wal-Mart had requested. There is a simple reason for that: tires are not shipped in containers.

However, placing RFID tags on the tires themselves is not an easy task, either. According to a Goodyear spokesperson:

"This is complex because tires are flexible, the material properties can interrupt or distort the radio signal, they are shipped individually and they are stored in arbitrary positions."

In addition to the Wal-Mart initiative, Goodyear is also working on a separate "smart tire" project. That project would involve sensors that tell drivers that tires are low on air, and may appear on cars as early as the 2007 model year.

Read more in the Craintech article here.