Reuters: Spare tires ditched as automakers seek efficiency

But if it comes with a full-size spare, you can always buy a real tire. I'd complain, but I'd still pay, and have a real spare tire.

Safest motorcycle on the road! Especially since it only goes 35 mph. And it doesn't fall over and land on you when you hit a patch of sand or have to brake suddenly. (It has excellent brakes.) It's not as safe as a Prius driven at 35 mph, but it's nowhere near as dangerous as a two-wheel motorcycle.

And you are correct that it is registered as a three-wheel motorcycle and I had to take a trike test and get the trike endorsement to drive it legally in WA.

 

They are nice to have, but I, and likely most people, will see more use out of the extra space with the donut than the use of the full size spare.

I don't ride a motorcycle because of the other idiots on the road. A trike isn't much better, may be worse, when a SUV in the opposite lane drifts into your lane.

 

An underpowered single front wheel trike is about the most dangerous vehicle on the road. It doesn't have enough performance to get out of harms way by accelerating and a evasive maneuver that a semi-skilled motorcycle rider could easily use to avoid harm would roll one over.

 

The Xebra is not like a "real" three-wheel motorcycle. It's a three-wheel car with a cab and seat belts. And it is as hard to roll over as a sedan, due to the low center of gravity. I've heard the argument that a "skilled" rider can use a motorcycle's power to "get out of the way." I don't buy it. At 35 mph a Prius is much safer than a Xebra. But a Xebra at 35 on surface roads where 35 is the speed limit, is safer than a Prius at 70 mph on the freeway. And at all times, a Xebra is safer than a two-wheel motorcycle, as evidenced by the number and severity of motorcycle accidents.

 

Cars are safe because of construction and regulations.
These are more lax for trike cars, which makes them more at mercy of the other driver's skills on the road. Now, most crashes involve just one car, but without the full safety features of a car, those multi car crashes become more of a concern.

Odds are the occupants of a Xebra doing 35 shouldn't come to much harm in case of a crash, and will be far better off than a motorcycle rider. But what if odds go against you, and a SUV doing 35 in the opposite direction suddenly swerves into the Xebra's lane. Without any warning, it's a 70mph collision with a larger object. Relative speed kills. The Xebra is still better off than the motorcycle, but it might not be by much. If there is warning, the motorcycle, being more nimble, does have a better chance of avoiding the SUV all together.

I'll give that the battery weight decrease the roll over chance, but the number of motorcycle accidents has no bearing on the Xebra's safety record.

 

Just another thing to make more money for the dealer. Before i bought my 2011 prius i looked at all kinds of vehicles and took many trips to dealerships. I found a couple cars that already came without a spare, jack or lug wrench. The sales person saw the Wth look on my face and said don't worry we can order those items for you. I knew better and asked that 64 dollar question How much. $$ 300 dollars before tax which followed the BITE ME look on my face as i walked out the door.

 

I'd rather pay a small penalty in FE to have a spare tire than to gain the extra space. It's like insurance: you pay for it even though you rarely need to use it.

 

If it's an option, I'll take the spare. Just don't see the need for a full size that's all.

Where it's not standard, a spare costs $100 in the build/price section of manufacturer websites. At least those I looked at.

 

I wonder if Prius c will have a spare.

 

Pretty soon they'll start switching to just building three-wheel cars like the Zap Xebra, in order to save even more on tires!

At least my Xebra had a spare tire.

 

In post # 23 of this thread I stated I was heading out on a 5000+ mile trip and wouldn't want to do it without a spare tire. Well, I am back from my trip and I have a new tire on my Prius. I had a blowout on the left front tire 25 miles North of Las Vegas, put the spare on, and had the tire replaced in LV.

 

A gram of prevention is worth three kilograms of cure. Eliminating the spare tire smacks of substituting oil for knowledge, rather than applying the knowledge. I first ask if the Rocky Mountain Institute's Hypercar has a spare tire. The rest of the vehicle is so strong and so light (carbon fiber) the mass of the spare tire doesn't matter. The vehicle is efficient and takes very little energy to operate. Detroit continues to ignore RMI and keep its head stuck in the sand.

 

Fuel efficiency is just the excuse they all tell the public. It's really to save a couple bucks per car and up charge on the spare tire option.

 

The RMI's Hypercar does not have a spare tire, and the vehicle is neither strong nor efficient, for the simple reason that it does not exist. It is a concept. And a concept that is more than a decade old, and has never moved beyond the imagination of the folks at the RMI. None of the claims for it have been demonstrated.

It is well known that a more efficient car can be designed by reducing size, power, and weight. The Aptera was such a car, and at least Aptera actually put some prototypes on the road. Aptera employed all the concepts that RMI advocates for its Hypercar, and achieved impressive FE, but to do this had to limit itself to a two-seat car (look at how low sales numbers were for the two-seat Honda Insight). Aptera appealed strongly to fringe EV enthusiasts like me and some others here on Prius Chat, but try selling it to a soccer mom. Considering what Aptera was able to achieve in the real world using RMI's concepts, I believe that RMI's claims of a full-size car are vastly overblown.

I lament the poor management decisions that killed the Aptera. I think it would have been a wonderful car, and half a year ago I'd have bought one in an eyeblink.

I don't remember if it had a spare tire. Contrary to what skruse said, the mass of a spare tire becomes more significant as the mass of the car decreases, because the tire becomes a greater percentage of the total weight. But I still want a spare. I'm willing to accept the FE hit for the safety and convenience of the spare.

 

Not that far off-topic: the demise of the bumper. There's a thread here, someone dealing with cosmetic scrapes on a newly acquired Prius' "bumper". They're basically fairings, calling them bumpers is laughable. Go back over 25 years: bumpers actually offered some protection, could take a light bump without damage, and so on.

 

Like the steel beams on the front and rear of my Jeep. They aren't pretty, they aren't aerodynamic, but they don't cost $500 every time some joker taps you in a parking lot.

Tom

 

They did protect themselves, but not the occupants. For a while bumpers were required to survive 5mph impacts without damage, but that was one of the 'unnecessary government regulations' deleted during the Reagan Administration.

A coworker once described the even stronger bumpers of an earlier generation. One could pick up used cars that survived crashes so well that no repairs were required. You just had to wipe off the bloody faceprints of the previous owners from the inside of the windshield.

Today the whole system is better designed to sacrifice itself to better protect the humans inside.

 

When I drove a tow truck in the 1983-1990 range, most cars could be towed by throwing 2 "J" hooks under the front "A" frame and the bumper held the weight of the car on the tow straps. I don't there is a "bumper" out there today that could withstand this, hence we have wheel lifts and flatbeds and "J" hooks and straps are reserved for those that are heavily damaged in the front or other special cases.

 

Hyundai and mini are 2 brands that eliminated spares. Hyundai quoted me $300 if i wanted a spare in a 2011 elantra. I did not check ,but if no spare do you get a jack and tire iron?

 

What's the point, if there's no spare tire?