I should probably add a reflective vest. That's a good idea. At home, I've got a pretty good adjustable rolling stool I picked up at Harbor Freight. Has a tray on the bottom with a magnetic pad where I can set all the nuts. Wasn't sure it was going to be worth the $110, but it's proved itself on a lot of jobs. It's been great for lawn mower servicing and the like. I like that it has a little back to the seat. Adds some stability. https://www.harborfreight.com/professional-adjustable-shop-seat-with-tool-storage-black-58658.html I also just ordered a couple collapsible stools off Temu. Probably junk, but it was under $20 for two of them including shipping. If they work, great; if not, I'm not out that much. I wanted something that would fold up really small so I could tuck it into one of the side pockets in the cargo area.
I love that set up except for the need for the battery to be charged. Life doing what it does, when I have a flat I will also have forgotten to charge the wrench battery.
I use Ryobi tools, so I have a bunch of batteries. And they've got a button to press to see the state of charge. I check every once in awhile(maybe every month or two) and if it's less than 4/4 bars, I swap it with one of my other batteries. I use 4Ah batteries for this, so even at half charge they still would have enough juice to do a full tire rotation and completely fill a couple flats. You don't want to get stranded unprepared in a bad ND winter. The cell phone changed everything, but I grew up pre-cell phone when at least a few people died every winter from getting stranded on the road. What really drove it home to my generation was a family of four all dying inside the city limits of Fargo on a major street during a snowstorm. They got stuck going under a railroad underpass and let the exhaust pipe get covered in snow(even though they cleared it at least a couple times). Carbon monoxide poisoning.
I got a donut for my Gen 5 but I suspect I'll be calling roadside assistance to install it if I ever need to, unless the car's in the driveway. It's not that I want to avoid the physical effort. It's that I find the idea of mucking around the side of the road while cars are zipping around very unappealing. Also, it rains a lot around here and working in the rain is no fun.
My VW beetle had the spare in the front trunk and use the pressure from the tire to power the windshield washer.
You can still get an OEM Toyota collapsible all-metal, wheel chock, 09184-00010, and a bag for it, 09120-28040, and probably the rest of the kit, even today!
Besides a full-size spare tire, I also keep a 2,000 amp car jump starter, a better scissor jack, and an 18-volt cordless tire inflator in my Prius. (Got to test out the jump starter on a Jeep and it worked great for him.) In my Tundra, I also have a heavy duty tow strap to help folks out if they get stuck in the snow. (Little Honda's seem to need the most help around here!)
That looks similar to what I had except mine was school bus yellow instead of black. When at home I now use some rubber Harbor Freight wheel chocks.
Once, I hit a huge pothole with my 85 Corolla LE with 175/70R13 tires while going 80 mph in the № 1 lane (the leftmost lane) of the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway near Crenshaw Blvd. The wheel was bent. I believe there was a left shoulder, and I waited there. Highway Patrol came and stopped traffic by zigzagging, and I drove to the right shoulder. Then a tow truck (AAA?) came and installed my temporary spare for me. Luckily, it had air. Later, I bought a new OEM steel wheel. Over the next several days, I saw others with blown tires until they fixed the pothole.
This brings up a point... If you don't have a spare, the goo doesn't work(or you don't want to use it), and you have a FWD gen5 Prius, you can be towed by most any tow truck to a service location. Where you'll almost certainly need to leave your vehicle for a couple days while the dealership/tire shop waits for a replacement tire to arrive. If you have an AWD gen5(or gen4 for that matter), your car can only be transported by a flat bed truck(unless you want to risk many, many thousands of dollars of damages to your hybrid system). So if no flatbed is quickly available, be prepared to wait and then wait again for a new tire. Or you can have a spare available in the car and still call a service to have them put it on for you. And then you can keep using your car until the new tire arrives(albeit at 50mph or less and no long trips). That last part is over half the reason I did my whole spare tire conversion mod. This is my only car in an area where a car is pretty much a necessity. 10x that in winter. Driving on a spare for a few days is a thousand times better than being immobile. Granted, I've got a second set of wheels/tires that I can switch to, but that spare can get me home to them if I'm out on a highway somewhere at 2am and 50+ miles from the nearest towing service. I get it that PHEV owners have fewer choices than us HEV owners. And if you live in a larger metro with good public transit or have a spare vehicle, I can see why it's not a high priority. But for a lot of us...
I have a Gen5 HEV and I have a full size (OEM 17") off-season spare behind my front passenger seat. On a wacky note, how many mpgs would you gain by mounting four donuts?
I think it's in the parts of the manual that no one ever reads until it's too late. A disadvantage of a hybrid is that your wheels are basically hooked up to a generator. If any of your drive wheels are spinning, they're generating electricity. And that electricity can feed back into the hybrid system and fry the inverter or more. If you're super unlucky, the power somehow finds its way into the HV battery and then it's time to grab the marshmallows. (There are safety systems to prevent this if the car is shut off, but if it was left in Ready mode prior to towing... ???) I just doublechecked the manual. You can be towed by a standard tow truck as long as the rear wheels are on dollies(AWD). But either way it's good to know this in case the tow driver doesn't. If towing using a rope/chain, do not exceed 18mph/30kph in either FWD or AWD models.
I was thinking about donut wheels with aggressive snow tires this morning. I don't know that anyone makes a normal tire for a wheel that thin. Donut tires would likely provide modest additional efficiency, but the handling could be exciting.
