It happened. Flat tire. No spare. In middle of Nowhere.

Well, two things.
I don't like to present something as a scientific fact, when it isn't. This was my own singular experience, one time, almost 30 years ago.
The first time it happened (flat) I ignored it, as a "act of god" happening. But then it just kept happening, and NOT the same tire.
I just got frustrated with the reality. It's horrible to have a new vehicle, that you worry about driving, because you're afraid there is a pretty good chance you'll get a flat.

Secondly, all I can really say, is I replaced with a set of Michelin tires, and immediately the reoccurring flats stopped.

Luck?
Coincidence?

Maybe.

I also will admit the OEM tires on my 2010 Honda Fit, My 2013 Prius, and now my 2016 Honda Fit, seemed to be much better. After 3 years, I'm getting close to needing new tires for my Fit, but they've been OK.
I think maybe times have changed. I think there was a time when manufacturers just gave you the cheapest tire they could. I think today, tire manufacturers know that it's their reputation on the line, whether you are buying a 1st new set of tires, or driving off the lot with OEM tires.

I can't remember now what OEM tires I had on the Prius,...I want to say Goodyear Fuel Max- but they were fine after 3 years, when I traded it in.
And I believe I have Firestone on my Fit now, and they have been fine. Even though I'm approaching needing to think about replacement sometime in the next year, based on tire wear.

 

I tried out the OEM jack, too, just to make sure it was OK. Didn't have any real problems although it did leave quite a bit to be desired.

 

Any pics of your last knackered one?

I did dodge one falling off of a pickup the other day.

That was pretty knackered.

 

Perhaps the original set of tires had simply removed all the nails from the road.

I'm sure a tire's ability to pick up debris and resist puncture varies between models. They are made with different treads and materials. The tire pressure may play a part.

 

I have not found this to be the case. 2006 Honda Civic - OEM Turanza 400 were terrible. Performed poorly and wore quickly. Replaced with Michelins. 2011 VW Jetta - came with the same OEM tires as the Civic - I didn't even wait for this set to wear out, and replaced them with Michelins. 2010 Honda Fit - OEM tires not very good (terrible in both wet and snow). 2018 Prius Prime - Toyo NanoEnergy A29. Now at 9,600 miles and the jury is still out.

On the other hand, my 2006 MX-5 came with very nice Michelin Preceda summer tires. When I replaced them, that tire wasn't available so I moved to the Pilot Super Sports which are even better. Our 2010 Outback also came with nice tires (Bridgestones, I think). Got over 61K miles from them and replaced just a bit early when Michelins came on a good sale.

 

Keep in mind...I'm admitting this is a singular case from nearly 30 years ago. I do think things have changed.
I'm talking about an "animal" that doesn't exist anymore. That is a bare bones, 4 cylinder, small pick-up, that at the time I purchased it, Nissan sold for less than $7000....brand new. It didn't even come with a back bumper, I had to pony up $500 more, to have one put on.

I had two of those small pick-ups in a 4 year span, traded one in on the other. And I loved them both. They were great. ......uh...by todays standards pretty unsafe, but for a young person, financially limited, it was great, usable transportation, with the reliability of being brand new...for a relatively cheap purchase price. Nothing really like it exists today. Nothing can. The first one, didn't even have airbags. They both had bench seats. You couldn't sell them today.

And as bare bones as those trucks were? I'm sure Nissan wasn't putting the best OEM tires on them.
Today? I think that has changed.

 

I would not be confident in this assertion. Manufacturers still have a drive to put the product out the door for the least money, and the last thing consumers look at on a new car is the tires (unless it's a performance car). So, every dollar saved on an OEM tire is a dollar of potential profit.

I had a 1984 Toyota 2WD diesel 5-speed long bed truck, and it got so many flats I just left the spare in the bed and didn't bother slinging it underneath where it belonged.

 

Hey, it was a $7000 dollar truck....brand new. I'm pretty confident Nissan wasn't putting the best OEM tires on them. As I said, they weren't even putting a back bumper on them.
No radio, no bucket seats, no air conditioning, no stereo/radio. The profit margin had to be nearly non-existent.
According to crash tests at the time, it was a ladder framed death trap.

But at 20 something years old? Saving up for something reliable?
I bought one.
I loved it's spartan, no nonsense reality.
And I'm willing to go out on that limb and say my ownership experience wasn't a fluke....the tires they put on them when they sold it to you? Weren't the best.

 

Today I plonked on the donut spare for hah hahs, as I figured it'd be better to sort it all out on a sunny summer afternoon rather than during a blizzard in January... n'est pas? And yes, the jack IS crappy but does suffice, the lift points are not the easiest to get at without laying on the ground and, when putting the original wheel back on I had a greater appreciation for Mercedes style lug bolts (which include an install tool upon which the tire is hung, negating the need to fidget around getting lug nuts started on the short studs). All in all, a worthwhile endeavor.

 

That's why I carry a couple of old bath towels in the back. Air temp is 103° here today. Imagine the asphalt temp, or hard gravel or sleet/snow cover.

 

Bicycle tires, yes. But car tires?

During the week's bicycle event in Eastern Washington, I assisted several riders with flats from goatheads. In goathead territory (reached midway through the event), we tell them to ride as close to the vehicle tracks as practical, because car-truck tires tend to grind up and de-weaponize the spikes. Get too far off the shoulder, and the evil things are more pristine and numerous and destructive.

I think the reason is different. Most human-made sharp debris is initially laying flat, so that is how the front tire hits it. Then it gets kicked up into random orientation, with the rear tire striking it before it can settle down flat again. So the rear tires encounter a lot more points-up sharp objects.

 

We keep a movers blanket in the back... comes in handy for a myriad of uses.

 

Old thread, I know, but I can't resist commenting. When reading the OP's post, it felt like I was reading something out of the annual book documenting all accidents on Denali that year. Most were accidents waiting to happen, and a series of small mistakes growing in size and urgency as the story progresses. Having read many years of those mountaineering accident reports, was extremely useful when I made a series of mistakes on a (different) big mountain myself. Had I not read that great info and analysis from experts about all sort of other people's incidents and accidents, my own ordeal might have been fatal. It came pretty close even with the info. That is one reason I'm prone to paying it forward. I'd rather share too much than too little, when I know something that might help someone else out somewhere down the road.

I am biased regarding tires, but my biases would have prevented the mistakes made in this story. That doesn't mean I wouldn't have had the flat, seeing as we don't know the real cause. But it probably would have. I'm glad it didn't lead to an accident, just inconvenience.

Car manufacturers generally recommend tire pressures which are bad for your life expectancy. Lose a few psi here, a couple psi there, run into some cold weather, drive fast on even one underinflated tire, it's the path to a familiar ending.

I had a girlfriend who had BMW inflate her tires to factory specs all the time, which had scarily little safety margin. In fact, her owner's manual instructs that if you are going to drive 85mph or higher, or have passengers in the back seat, you MUST go to higher than the stated inflation pressures. They put 130mph or 150mph tires on her car, then specified low inflation pressures good only to 85mph with nobody in the back seat???? I can't make this stuff up. Go read the manual for a 2011 328i X-Drive sometime if you don't believe me. It is insane. Toyota is better, but not much better, I still consider many of their tire load range choices and inflation recommendations, to be marginal. But that is true of pretty much every brand of passenger cars. There seems to be a competition to see who can get away with the lowest tires, lowest suspensions, and lowest tire pressures. The good news is that at least slightly bigger, much stronger tires can be fitted to every Prius from 2004 up without modification.

Everyone should read everything written on the sidewall of your tires, and use Google to figure out what it means. Particularly the speed rating, the load range, and what pressure is required to carry the heaviest load the tire is designed for. That is NOT at the pressure recommended by any car maker. Read it on the tire: X number of pounds at some specified maximum pressure for the tire. I can remember when tires usually had a max pressure of 32psi, then 35-36, then 44, now usually 44, 50, or 51psi for passenger car tires. I no longer buy 44psi tires, as I get only 50-51 and run at 50psi. Tires do not rip themselves to shreds at the max sidewall pressure. Or even above it, though I am not a subscriber to running above what a mechanical engineer (I am one) decided was max design pressure. If people want to overinflate, that's up to them, I don't do it and I don't condone it, as I don't consider max sidewall to be overinflation, I consider it to be just listening to the engineers at Michelin rather than some committee of marketers and engineers at Toyota. The marketers want a smooth ride, the engineers tell them the lowest pressure that leaves any safety margin at all to achieve that, and they engrave it on the door plaque. Tires rip themselves apart due to running underinflated, not overinflated. The best way to stay safe is to never have an underinflated tire.

Cheap insurance anytime you suspect a leak in any tire: Inflate all 4 of them to the lowest max-load pressure specified on any of the sidewalls if you have mismatched tires. Try keeping the pressures equal, unless some time/situational emergency (which might include trying to keep a feeble 12v compressor alive long enough to get you to safety) prompts you to only inflate the leaking one. If they're very uneven, drive very cautiously and get help at the first opportunity. Full inflation makes it easier to hear and find a leak if there is one. It keeps you away from deadly underinflation. It is not stressing the tire beyond its design, it is putting it into its strongest, safest, and coolest running tire configuration. It minimizes hydroplaning. Many benefits. Whether or not it changes the car's handling or ride in a way you don't like, or can get you stuck in sand or mud more easily, is another matter.

When you said you let air out of the tire when the pressure read higher at altitude, I gasped and would have been yelling "Don't do it" if you were within earshot. I know the TPMS light could be interpreted as meaning anything. My advice is to never interpret it to mean overinflation, without some real evidence. Letting air out is a 1-way street you don't want to go down without access to a compressor if you're wrong, unless you have a tire gauge and are sure it's what's needed. Overinflation requires very deliberate acts to create, involving an air compressor, or something bizarre like propane inside the tire. It's far more likely underinflation when the warning light comes on.

Though I chose to remove and replace mine within a week or so when new, I don't think any of the tires that Toyota chooses as OEM on any Prius or Prime, are a potential cause of your tire trouble. Tires get punctured. Tires leak. Tires fail when driven underinflated. It is industry standard to specify tire load ranges and inflation pressures that are marginal and don't leave much room for leaks being safe. Whether it was a puncture or another type of leak, your tire did what any tire would do when it loses air. Did you ever find out what caused the leak?

Sometimes I'll go 10-15 years without a flat, then I'll have 2 or 3 in a year. In my Prime, on the way to an aunt's funeral, I was looking at the EV/HV mode button when a sharp granite curb seemingly moved 2 feet toward my front right tire, sliced the sidewall. For anyone wanting to know what the max speed you can drive with the rim on a totally deflated front tire on the Prime without it flapping into the fender and plastic panels, the answer is 14mph. It took me 20 minutes to limp home and doe a NASCAR type tire change. I went from running early, to arriving 2 minutes after the service started.

I keep one spare at home, one at each of my kids' homes, and one at my business. I have the AAA 200-mile towing option, a can of flat fix, and a lousy 12v compressor I plan to replace with a good one.