I was on Vacation in Waikiki one year, rented a Scooter and didn’t want the $25 insurance from them, I went all the way to Kailua and boom got a flat 25 miles away-called the scooter rental place and they said how the heck did you get all the way there lol, they wanted $200 to come and pick up… I said lemme call ya back for that haha, went to a couple of tire places and no one wanted to touch it at all, Rode to O’Reilly and bought the Fix A Flat for $12 rode back to Waikiki in the dark and dropped off the Scooter the next day and told them to fix their tire before renting it again
I booked Uber black the last time my eqs stranded me. Uber black is professional drivers so they are fine with car seat/no car seat. Mercedes paid for it.
With a direct subscription to AAA, it could have been towed to a location of their choice, even back home the 40 miles needed. None the less, they would have been better off at any random tire shop, versus a Nissan dealer. I bet they could even have found a shop willing to mount a used tire, of the same size, and be back on the road.
Also, blame the overly protective nanny state car seat laws. You save maybe 5 kids from car accidents a year, but probably prevented millions of kids from being born because of how much of a pain it is to travel with them.
Back seats: where ‘baby on board’ signs are conceived!
I can share my experience with flat tires I had in the past 12 months (Twice with 2 different cars).
The first time I went to Autozone bought a tire air pump with foot pedal for like $15. Used it to put some air in the tire and drive to the closest “Discount Tires” to get a free flat tire repair.
The second time I went to Discount Tire before the tire had lost much pressure. They wanted to replace it with a new tire. I asked them to put some air in the tire. Then I drove it to a second Discount Tire shop and got a free repair.
I think the pain is the ~$1.2mm you’ll need to raise a kid in California and get them through a UC (non-Stanford) school. Makes the EV depreciation of a Tesla seem like chump change.
I had a flat in XC90 recharge last week. Tried a whole bunch of options and eventually had AAA flat bed it to the dealership for a new tire. It was fine but also a huge PITA.
I think for my next EV lease I’m gonna buy a cheap donut that AAA can put on the car so I can at least drive to a dealership or Costco tire center.
Tire had nail and it was loosing 3 PSI per minute. I have been practicing what you mentioned for decade+. I keep DC powered tire inflater ($25 from HomeDepot) to pump up enough to next tire show. This was loosing too quickly where I opted against doing it since I had kids in back seats.
When I still had my M4 I had an AAA Premier membership. $300 a year but got at least 300 miles of towing out of that membership every year since I go to Purdue and all the good “performance” shops are in Indianapolis or Chicago. Saved me hours of driving (especially when my car wouldn’t under its own power).
Probably a liability issue but AAA should start packing Fix-A-Flat since more cars are going spareless.
EVs more likely not have a spare because they use that space for batteries but almost every trunk space review looks like they can fit a donut in there instead of storage for cables.
