Why cars should have actual spare tires

This happened to my daughter Thursday evening on her commute home from work to her left-rear tire.  While a bit mystifying at first, it turns out that she ran over something that very quickly punched a clean 1/4" diameter hole in the tread at freeway speed, and the inner sidewall of the tire shredded by the time she was able to get from the middle lane at speed, and to the right shoulder and safely stopped.  VERY fortunately, no damage other than the tire happened, other than a few frazzled nerves.  

So, automakers, THIS is why the move to deleting spare tires from modern cars and replacing them with inflator kits is not a real super cool idea.  I took Friday off from work to help her get this taken care of, as I have quite a few vacation days that she does not have, and there were multiple people at the tire store with similar issues where replacement tires were needed.  

First cars ran out of room for the width of a full-size spare, now they're running out of room for even the diameter of a donut spare...and with the average new car buyer increasingly becoming a person who would see the costs of getting a flat as negligible, I don't expect to see externally mounted spares making a comeback either.

Note I'm the guy who used to pack a full size spare on long road trips but I will offer a counter to that /devil's advocate view.

Do you want to be changing a spare tire on the side of a busy freeway? We all know it's dangerous.............better to call for whatever roadside assistance one may have. 

OK OK we all know it's a cost cutting, design and packaging decision......................

With that said I wonder how many flats like this pepole actually get in their lifetime of driving.

I lost a tire 60 miles into a several hundred mile journey home with my family. On a Sunday evening, just as the local tire places were starting to close, but still early enough to realize that nobody carried our tire anyway. No spare, but man, if I had given it any thought, I would have thrown one of my mounted snow tires in the trunk before heading off. I'll be buying a full-size tire and wheel for my car before a long road trip, and I'll just toss it in there with the luggage.

The bright side? I finally got to see Rhode Island. We made a trip out of it and spent the next day bumming around in Providence while we waited for the tire shop. 10/10, would recommend. Cool town.

Tom1200 said:

Do you want to be changing a spare tire on the side of a busy freeway? We all know it's dangerous.............better to call for whatever roadside assistance one may have. 

Yeah, never stop on the side of the freeway unless the car just won't run.  If it goes flat on the freeway it's already beyond repair, so just put the hazards on, limp it to the next exit, and change it there.

As for the question of carrying a spare, it really depends on the frequency of complete tire failure.  Modern tires are stronger, and the advent of TPMS means that people are less likely to run them really low on air, so complete blowouts don't happen anywhere close to as often as they used to.  In the last 20 years I've had more water pumps fail than I have had complete tire blowouts, and yet I don't carry a spare water pump around with me.

I've probably had 8-10 flat tires in my whole life. The majority of those were slow leaks with a nail, etc. 2 of them were relatively quick depressurizations that resulted in immobilization, but surface roads in urban areas. 1 was an immobilization on a highway that I wasn't super happy about changing with the traffic. Unless you're driving in a lot of areas where you get out of cell phone coverage in the mountains, or long trips out into the wilderness, I don't really see the need. It would be nice if SUVs at least were designed with the fittings to mount an optional external rack for those that need it. I can't say I'd bother based on my experience, but Its always nice to have the option rather than be designed out of the choice and be forced to give up cargo area. Worst case you can probably get a trailer hitch mount I guess.

One day when I had a screw in my tire I wondered if tire guys throw a few handfuls out once in a while......totally unethical, dishonest, disgusting and no sane person would ever do that BUT.....

I've had 2 flats due to ancient tires finally giving up the ghost, one I was sure would happen any minute and had prepared for, and another one due to picking up a nail in the tire (on track, but it could easily have happened on the street). I also had a near-flat incident I might not have got away with so easily if I wasn't running stiff-sidewalled tires on a Samurai, IIRC that was from some bit of road debris causing a puncture as well.

In reply to Datsun240ZGuy :

That is actually a common practise here in Lima..  A couple of years ago when we lived in an (even) less desirable area, we'd get 2 or 3 punctures per month, the vast majority with the same type of nail, with the ends sharpened.  Yes there were several tyre fitters in the area.  A few even got convicted for the practise in another part of Lima.  Sadly the only alternative route meant going through an even worse area, and not wanting to be a news story, just sucked it up.

I ended up getting loads of fix-a-flat type products, and the diy plug kits, I was fixing flats before work, in my lunch break, after work..   Glad we moved, there's no tyre shops close by!

If they can put a donut tire in the back of my FR-S, your manufacturer has no excuse. Except to be a cheap berkeley.

They make a spare in a bag with jack and lug wrench and stuff for teslas. Should be standard. Hit a curb in a blinding rainstorm pulling into parking lot up the street from home in my truck with a trailer/car behind it and blew a hole in the sidewall. If i didn't have a spare i would have been boned. 
 

did get AAA this year for christmas but still make sure i have a spare and tools. 

After I posted I had to think about how many flats I've had in 46 years of driving.

The most recent one, about 6 years ago, sold me on TPMS. The light on the dash came on so I slowed down within a 1/4 mile I pulled over to a safe space and changed it. 

I've had 3 failures over the years due to my trying to milk the tires past their sell by date. I don't do that anymore.

They just don't seem to be as common as they once were.

Appleseed said:

If they can put a donut tire in the back of my FR-S, your manufacturer has no excuse. Except to be a cheap berkeley.

No such luck on the 2nd gens. So now that's where the two amps for the OEM Audio+ system reside. 

If I get a flat, use Roadside Assistance. I'll be more angered about it likely damaging a hard to replace aftermarket wheel. 

In reply to Tom1200 :

I hit an ordinary Indianapolis pothole in DW's S60 and popped a sidewall at 4:00 one afternoon. The green goo reinflator was useless and AAA wanted to tow it to a place that was closing at 4:30 and wouldn't open until the next morning.

Luckily I was able to find a hole-in-the-wall used tire shop and they mounted a pair of new Chinesium specials in the right size.  But I had to get there by limping from gas station to gas station and putting as much air as I could in it each time.

One of my biggest pet peeves with new cars these days. Despite our brand new Subaru being a top-trim, fully-loaded model, it did not include a spare tire. But in other markets, Subaru sells the Impreza/Crosstrek with a spare, which even share a floor stramping for it.  So for $300 or so ON TOP of buying a new car, we can now road trip with some peace of mind instead of relying on a tow truck.

If the reason is cost, why can't I check an option box for it? If the reason is CAFE/environmental, tell me how much emissions are produced by unnecessary tow truck jobs?

The sad reality is a growing majority of our driving population couldn't swap a spare tire out anyway, so why bother taking the CAFE hit. 

My car came to me with a pump and a factory can of something like fixaflat. Road debris gave me... lessee.. 5? 6? tireshreds in 3 years. It was incredible. I gave up and bought a space saver spare on ebay, even though the spare wheel well in this trunk won't accomodate it. Since then, 5 or 6 years on, how many times have I had a blowout? That's right, zero! 

I was driving home from getting an alignment done on my wife's Jetta Sportwagen when BAM I hit a badly crumbling expansion joint on a concrete road. It bent both driver side wheels and blew out the sidewall on the front tire. As I pulled into the nearest parking lot I joined 3 other victims. After helping 2 other people swap their spares on I swapped my own and was good to go. The other 4-5 people that joined us while I was swapping were driving cars without spares and were going to be waiting a while for multiple flatbeds.

I drove around for years with no spare or runflats or inflator. It was a silly gamble. I do love that pickups come with full size spares. I even mounted mine up with a 5th matching wheel. I had a bad flat(big nail) last winter and I was glad to have my full size spare. My old jeep still has the 1996 maypop. I wouldn't ever drive on it, but I'd use it to limp off the highway if necessary.

maschinenbau said:

One of my biggest pet peeves with new cars these days. Despite our brand new Subaru being a top-trim, fully-loaded model, it did not include a spare tire. But in other markets, Subaru sells the Impreza/Crosstrek with a spare, which even share a floor stramping for it.  So for $300 or so ON TOP of buying a new car, we can now road trip with some peace of mind instead of relying on a tow truck.

If the reason is cost, why can't I check an option box for it? If the reason is CAFE/environmental, tell me how much emissions are produced by unnecessary tow truck jobs?

The sad reality is a growing majority of our driving population couldn't swap a spare tire out anyway, so why bother taking the CAFE hit. 

The Bolt is the same way, no spare for, uh, reasons.  I also did a roll-your-own kit for mine. Only difference is that the spare fire well is filled up with an amp and subwoofer. Fortunately the car has a mezzanine level in the trunk, and a Cruze compact spare fits in there along with jack, fire extinguisher,, Tesla adapter, 110v charger and a first aid bag.

We are the minority.

95% of car owners (probably higher than that) are too inept to change a tire successfully themselves.

Why bother giving them the equipment when they're going to call a tow-truck anyway?

Modern tires are fantastic. I'm 45, been driving since I was 16 and have only every changed a tire at the side of the road three times.

maschinenbau said:

If the reason is cost, why can't I check an option box for it? If the reason is CAFE/environmental, tell me how much emissions are produced by unnecessary tow truck jobs?

Making options available costs money even if nobody takes them.  That's why most manufacturers have moved away from a la carte option lists to a handful of packages.

As for CAFE, blame the government for that one.

I think a contributing factor is also that tires and wheels are so gigantically huge these days. The spares would take up a lot of room.

if you are relying on the can of tire goo that came with your car, be aware that it doesn't last forever. I used some on a flat when it was seven years old, and it wouldn't set up. Seven years of -30 winters and +40 summers seemed to do it in.

maschinenbau said:

One of my biggest pet peeves with new cars these days. Despite our brand new Subaru being a top-trim, fully-loaded model, it did not include a spare tire. But in other markets, Subaru sells the Impreza/Crosstrek with a spare, which even share a floor stramping for it.  So for $300 or so ON TOP of buying a new car, we can now road trip with some peace of mind instead of relying on a tow truck.

If the reason is cost, why can't I check an option box for it? If the reason is CAFE/environmental, tell me how much emissions are produced by unnecessary tow truck jobs?

The sad reality is a growing majority of our driving population couldn't swap a spare tire out anyway, so why bother taking the CAFE hit. 

My 2024 Accord Touring was the same way. Comes with a spare and tools in Canada, comes with a styrofoam block in the trunk well in the US even though it's the top trim level. Had to pay another $350 for a spare kit off of Amazon. Dumbest thing ever. 

chaparral said:

Beyond the liability issue of getting one of your drivers killed roadside, or crashing after installing the lugs roadside without a torque wrench, there are other reasons I would move to eliminate spare tires or inflation kits at my next automaker:

1) Difference in crash performance between having an inflated tire under the car and not - and we don't have control over your keeping the spare inflated before the crash

2) Space use for the tire versus moving the load floor down for luggage space, or moving the rear seat back, or putting a PHEV/HEV battery pack there

3) Weight and fuel consumption - the fuel burned moving a spare tire around on everyone's car is substantial

I also don't want people to have the ability to jack the car up without being at home on a level surface with jackstands handy, so I'd also like to reclaim the space lost to collapse-o-jacks.

NHTSA should ban spare tires and tire changing equipment. 

Big disagree. Why don't we just ban working on cars period? This is GRM...