The Dynamically Augmenting Wheel System (DAWS) is a segmented wheel which shifts shape to battle cornering forces. It seems like a great idea on paper. Too bad everything about it's a bad idea in reality.
Just because an idea can be modeled in 3D does it mean it will work in the real world. DAWS is one of those ideas. There are many things which are technically difficult to begin with, but there are two we'll point out which are engineering non-starters. First, we realize this isn't absolutely central to the concept, but the suspension would topple the car before the fancy wheel would even have a chance to transform. They've mistakenly designed control arms which place the roll center outside the car. Turn hard into a corner and the mass of the car acting on the control arms will turn the wheels on their edges. Oops.
Okay, pedantry aside, let's assume they design a roll center in the center of the car where it's supposed to be, those transforming wheels are going to be awfully bumpy through a corner and aren't going to help the handling anyway. The premise of the design depends on overcoming the limiting factor of all tires - friction. You get a dollar's worth of traction on any wheel, spend it how you like on cornering and acceleration, but you only get a dollar. This design assumes there's an extra dime floating around on top of that dollar. Let's say you're at maximum cornering load, using all the available friction and then this system kicks in, pushing the car in the opposite direction, and thus overdrawing the traction account. Instant understeer. So again, it looks pretty, is shiny, and will never be coming to a sports car near you. Feel free to dissect the many other unfortunate foibles below, and head over to the designers website to watch the animated video where the suspension remains perfectly still through a cornering event. [DAWS Homepage via Yanko Design]