No spare tyre? What happens when carmakers take away spare tyres
As hateful as space saver spare tyres are, there is a worse alternative which is becoming common in the new car market. This is what happens when cheapskate carmakers stop offering a spare tyre at all…
As much as I hate space saver spare tyres - and I do hate them - there is one worse alternative which is metastasizing through the new car market as we speak. It’s the rise in cars having no spare tyre at all.
I used to think that was just a statistical-type problem for people who went outside the city - a small percentage, basically. But I had an experience a couple of weeks ago which has changed my thinking on that. Here’s what happened…
In the same way modern medicine makes having cancer today the superior option compared with having it 20 years ago, a modern car today is almost entirely better than anything you could’ve bought 20 or 30 years ago.
But in addition to the force-feeding of pretend-autonomy features like lane-keeping and auto-steering that aren’t ready, and carmakers’ obsession with adding weight to every respective new model they make - thereby failing to respect the second law of thermodynamics when it comes to efficiency - the real-world consequence of spare tyre deletion played out in a hospital carpark.
It was a northern Sydney hospital where I found myself train spotting through the carpark because there's often some interesting rich-folks’ cars. I spotted a parked plug-in hybrid listing to one side. I'm not going to name the make or model because all plug-in hybrids that I'm aware of and all EVs, and plenty of normal internal combustion cars lack a spare wheel and tyre too. It’s a common problem and I don’t want to demonise the one brand or model.
Checking it out with the intent to leave a note about the front-right puncture, thinking ‘that's going to be double whammy of depression for the person who comes back to retrieve their car.’
The people are in the car and it's a woman about my age and she's sitting next to her elderly father - it could be any one of us in this situation, having a really bad day.
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So with a tap on the window I pointed out her flat tyre and she replied, “Yeah, I thought I did.”
Offering to help if she had the time, she said ‘that'll be lovely’ and we popped the boot, get out the mobility kit (as close as you can get to a spare tyre in modern hybrids), then I get close to the front of the car, I looked down at the tyre and there's two holes in the sidewall big enough you could basically put two fingers in. Looking at the mobility kit and I realised: Useless.
Every option so solve this woman’s problem was either a dead-end or an extremely stressful and exhausting series of steps for this person on top of her already shit day.
They've only got one car, her husband is tens of kilometers away and has no easy ability to rescue her, and as for roadside assistance (because the brand of car comes with roadside assistance), and while they're definitely still likely going to have to use that option, the only problem with that is what their solution will be.
With a flat tyre on such a vehicle, you would simply tow it. But how the hell do you get a tow truck onto level four of a multi-story car park? They would have to do one of two things:
1. Come with a jack and a jack stand, jack the car up, pull the wheel off, take the flat in another car to a tyre retailer (hopefully one that has the correct spec tyre) and get them to fit the new tyre, and then drive back to replace the wheel. Or;
2. Roadside assistance would have to drive the car out very carefully, down several hundreds of metres of steep ramps without damaging the rim (unlikely) or the concrete (remembering the hospital might send you a bill for damage because there's probably CCTV.)
Either way, I suggested she ring roadside assistance, tell them what the problem is and that the mobility kit is not going to help, and see what they say. They might have a miraculous solution to this problem.
But ultimately, what a hell-on-Earth problem to what would otherwise have been a 10 minute solution.
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There are times when having even a space saver will make your day, and Australia, less shit.
So let’s talk about what this customer - because she did spend a large chunk of her own money on this vehicle - has got to deal with in addition to the stress of her life’s problems, she now has solving this problem in the immediate foreground.
It could’ve been completely overcome in 10 to 12 minutes had that car just had a space saver. In other words, had the product planners and the engineers beaten the accountants on that argument, she’d be home safe and dealing with life.
This report is aimed directly to you, either as a consumer to beware of this in future, but more specifically it’s aimed at you if you are one of those senior accountants at a carmaker and you are advocating for the abolition of the space saver or the full-size spare on the next new model. Shame on you.
You really are doing the end user a terrible disservice.
My other piece of advice here, obviously, is that you should check the spare tyre before you buy a particular car, because that space saver, while it is a liability on the highway, it would get you out of trouble in suburban and city-based situations like this where you have to get moving ASAP.
But no spare tyre at all, which ‘eco’ cars and EVs and plug-in hybrids are increasingly bereft of any spare wheel solution at all, that is a freaking disaster.
Why did this happen in the first place? Well, unlike what the executives and decision-makers at car companies deal with in their day-to-day life, real people actually go through real shit.
Clearly the owner of this car was a little bit stressed that day, the car park is also evidently designed by accountants because the ramps are the tightest ramps you can get to maneuver a car through, the kerbs are high, sharp and have no forgiveness in their design, she's a little bit distressed and probably not thinking that straight, she might not have been there before, perhaps she’s a little bit disoriented in this unfamiliar environment having an already bad day, she biffs the kerb and it slices the tyre sidewall open.
She notices the steering feels funny, pulls into a parking spot and a few minutes later I turn up. But with one accountant’s decision being different, that could have seen her frown going upside down.
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