Seattle Times - Car manufacturers have been ridding their sedans and smaller SUVs of full-sized spares for some time. In 2018, Consumer Reports said, 60% of the vehicles it had tested over the previous five years came with small-sized temporary tires (“doughnuts”), and only 10% came with full-sized spares. Increasingly, however, cars are skipping the doughnut in favor of run-flat tires (tires you can continue driving on after a puncture), puncture kits, roadside assistance or … nothing.
The best-selling models of electric sedans and SUVs — Teslas, the Chevy Bolt, the Volkswagen ID.4, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, the BMW i4 and the Mercedes EQS — have no spare of any kind, even if they come with a premium price tag. Ditto for hybrids; the Toyota Prius, for example, hasn’t included a spare since 2016. That’s not because people magically stopped having flat tires. U.S. drivers suffer 94 million flat tires a year, according to LookupAPlate.com, a site that collects reports about bad drivers.
No comments:
Post a Comment