It should be illegal to sell cars without spare tires

[JoeH]

Markintosh wrote:
The thing is though is that it is tough to combine fuel efficiency (either gas or electric) without shedding weight. Every time you add in another airbag or side beam...or batteries... for safety, manufacturers have to look again for a place to shed weight. Since most of us prefer to have the finer elements of things like doors, rear seats and AC, there's not many more things to leave out. Leaving out the spare saves weight and allows the rear of the car to be more compact.

Currently, our only car without a spare is our Roadtrek van, based on a Promaster van. The upfitter typically leaves out the spare because the standard jacking points my not be accessible, and the standard jack may not handle the added weight. So we have just the compressor and goop kit plus are doubled up on roadside service options.

At the risk of jinxing myself, I have not had a true flat tire in 11 years...I had more than my share in college driving funky Vw's with junk yard tires.

It had been a while since I had a flat, then I got one earlier this year. I hit a bad pothole hidden in a puddle, the metal belt was damaged. There were wires from the belt sticking out from the side of the tread where it blends into the sidewall. Glad I had at least a "donut" spare, that was enough to drive home on.

[space-time]

This Volt doesn't even have a Jack. In fact there is no good place to put the jack as far as I understand. You could damage the body. You need to be very careful how you lift this thing.

[Carm]

“So what the hell do you do if you get a flat tire late in the evening in that area? the spare doughnut is only good for 50 miles, and puts strain on the differential.”
From what I’ve read it’s 70 miles @ 50 MPH because they are not real tires. As for the differential, it depends on what wheels are powering the car. The Tesla for example doesn’t have a differential. The volt has an open differential from what I read. It’s a front wheel drive so you should just move the donut to the back.

As for a jack, you should consider looking into a scissor jack.

[space-time]

I was thinking about Mazda CX-4 which is a AWD and you cannot disable traction on the rear wheels, the computer decides how much power go to the front wheels and how much to the rear wheels.

[Carm]

Interesting point about the Mazda.
Scissor Jack info :
https://www.google.com/amp/s/gm-volt.com...k-For-Volt&=1

[Dennis S]

Do you have a spare, wheel, and jack now?

[Speedy]

Sorry to hear of your tire problems, space-time.

I just drive slowly on the shoulder until I get to a place that can sell me a tire - no matter how far it is and whether I have a good spare or not. I won’t change tires on the roadside. If it’s 50 miles, I will call for road service and pay the freight. This is especially true in our -20° winter weather and barely eight hours of daylight.

I did buy a set of tires last summer before a 5000+ mile trip that included a long layover in Mexico City. I like that the Volt has a TPMS that shows each tire. One tire was a bit over one PSI lower than the other three and I left it that way. All four kept their pressure over the six month trip! A share of the trip was on two lane road in Mexico where it is necessary and customary to drive on the shoulder whenever need be so that on-coming traffic can pass. Sometimes there will be three vehicles coming at you, all side-by-side, on a two lane road, one passing another and the third passing both! Fortunately the shoulder has plenty of traffic so debris, i.e., tire food, is not a problem.

And those tires I bought were motivated by a driver (me) pulling a screw out of the face of the tire and not being able to screw it back in when air started to leak out. Fortunately it was during a weekday and I was able to drive the 15 blocks in traffic to a Firestone dealer without issue, eyeing the TPMS all the way as it dropped from, IIRC, about 40 to about 10.

[Carm]

Funny story about the screw Speedy. I have a set of tire plug kit for nails and screws and a compressor at home. I had one I’m my previous SUV but I wore it down. I pulled a screw last month and plugged it with the kit at home, still haven’t gotten to America’s tire. I have warranty on tires for flat repair.

[mattkime]

Weird Costco commercial

[space-time]

Dennis S wrote:
Do you have a spare, wheel, and jack now?

Mazda: jack and doughnut tire. The car is 3 year old, and I plan to check the spare once in a while and replace the spare at maybe 7-8 year mark, since it is not exposed to elements and I would hope it lasts longer than 5 year.

Volt: no jack, no spare, in fact I need to refill the goop cartridge. it expired March 2019, so the goop was "slightly expired" (is that an oxymoron??? LOL). There is no practical place to store a jack and spare tire in this car, unless you want to use half of the trunk space.