Recently, industrial design students at DAAP (the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning) were asked to address the future of automobile design by focusing on an often-overlooked component: The tires. Hankook Tire America sponsored a three-month competition tasking the students with designing sustainable, efficient and performance-enhancing tires for a car of the future.

The students did not disappoint. Each of the four finalists' designs offers a completely different take on what a smarter, more sophisticated tire could do by incorporating shape-shifting techniques or mag-lev technology:

The first and second designs featured in the video, Ben Zavala's "Tiltred" tilting tire design and Mark Hearn's "Motive" off-road concept, won first and second place, respectively. The names of the students behind the third and fourth designs were not released. (If you guys/gals are reading this, let us know who you are!)