Impossible to find tires for my Prius XLE AWD

One of our sidewalls ripped open last week as well. None of the 19" tires to be had anywhere right now. It's absurd, and in my opinion a ridiculous choice by Toyota to go with this size tire on the 19" wheels.

I bought two used tires on Ebay to try and hold us over until availability increases on new ones. It's not ideal, but it's better than our car sitting useless at the dealer for another week.

Snow tires will indeed work but they're very soft and will wear quickly. They won't hurt anything but you'll notice a difference in ride and handling. But a soft tread tire is better than no tire and not driving.

 

You can check out Douglas24Prime solution to this problem too (225/45R19 only on rear wheels). That tire size has a lot of options on TireRack.

 

There was a lot of concern about this when the specs came out, and some decided to wait until availability improved.
It’s unfortunate that manufacturers go this route, but some would argue that the the other option is delaying the car.
Of course they could have gone with a more conventional size

 

At the end of the day, Toyota can't force tire makers to make large amounts of extra tires or different varieties of tires. All Toyota can do is make the tire makers deliver whatever amount of tires that is part of the contract they made for new car production.

And tire makers aren't going to spend money and time designing and making molds and dedicating production slots for tires they can only expect to sell a few hundred of a year. In a couple more years, that market will start to balloon as the 2023s and some 2024s start needing their first sets of replacement tires. Then we'll be talking about a total market of 100k+ aftermarket tires a year instead of the few thousand a year it currently is.


IOW, there's no point waiting to buy until availability improves because availability won't improve until there are enough sales to justify it.

 

Try calling Tirerack, if you haven't. It took a week but I got a replacement shipped last week.

 

Wow what a disaster. Hopefully supply will improve when tires on 2023 start to wear out and demand increases. But also if no other cars start using that size, it's going to be a long term problem. I think when all four tires wear out, it's worth considering dropping $600 or $700 to go with 17" wheels and solve the issue long term.

 

Buy smaller rims... 16-17"s and put on a different tire size. Will be cheaper and more convenient in the long run. Several posters on Reddit have done this... one as small as 16" rims.

https://www.reddit.com/r/prius/s/Fag0dUTE6D

 

1-5 business days: All-Season Tires | Tires | Discount Tire

 

I went this route as well.16x7 rims for my 2024 LTD with 205/65R16 tires (less than a percentage odometer reading difference and loads of options).

Another Reddit post about this for reading:

 

Besides the additional expense to switch wheel size I’m also concerned about the height. Does someone mind explaining what wheel/tire size options would not involve a decrease in ground clearance. Is there such a thing as a wheel that’s smaller than the 19” OEM but has higher profile and won’t decrease ground clearance? If there was someone local to install a lift kit, I could do this also.

I’m also trying to think about pros and cons of switching out the wheels as soon as I get the Prius or waiting until the blowout occurs. Since it’s inevitable considering the roads I drive on it’s probably best to switch right away. I just don’t have a storage space for the OEM wheels/ tires while I wait for them to sell.

 

Using a website like Tire Size Calculator is a great way to determine the difference between tire sizes. It's also full of info on how to read and understand tire sizes (How to Read Tire Size).

 

The web site wheel-size.com/calc/ gives a pretty complete picture wheel and tire fitment. It allows you to enter in fender clearance (my measurement = 16mm on stock wheels and tires), wheel wells clearance (my measurement with stock tires and wheels = 22mm, and suspension clearance (my measurement with stock tires and wheels = 50 mm). I have a Prime XSE premium and used those measurements when I bought my second set of wheels and tires.

When it comes to ground clearance if you tire diameter matches the stock OEM tire diameter than you ground clearance should remain the same. The stock wheel/tire diameter is 678 mm or 26.68" with 19" alloy wheels.

My understanding of wheel pricing is that smaller wheels are generally cheaper since they take less material to make.

The web site Tire Sizes the site corresponding to the app mentioned in the previous post, has a table of tire sizes and can be listed by tire diameter. For a 17" wheel tire size and a tire size of 225/55R17 the diameter of the tire is 0.3% or 1mm bigger than oem tire diameter with 195/50R19. You would gain 0.5mm of ground clearance.

Using the same web site I can see that tire size 225/60R16 has a tire diameter that is 0.2% or 2 mm smaller. Therefore you would loose 1 mm of ground clearance since half of that diameter difference is between the axle and the ground.

For an 18" wheel a tire size of 245/45R18 gives a tire diameter that is exactly the same size as the oem 195/50R19 tire. You would need a wheel that was at least 7.5" inches wide and to fit in the clearance of the fender an offset of around +50. Rays Homura 2x7Plus wheel would work with such a tire and is exactly that size i.e. 18x7.5+50. Blackhawk Japan has those wheel for $222.

In addition to tiresize.com/tiresizs/ diameter listing tire diameter for each size it will also show you all available tires in certain size when you click on the size. For example the tire size 245/45R18 has over 150 different tires available. For comparison if you click on 195/50R19 it only lists 1 tire available and that is the Michelin X-Ice Snow. This may have to due with inventory not certain though.

I just today had a spare mounted on a toyota wheel and secured in the back of the prime with a strap for ease of mind on long road trips. I bought an alloy wheel that cost $295 from toyota but using a steel wheel you could likely get a steel wheel with tire and have it mounted and get straps to hold it down in the back with a tire tote and felts for $250. Here is a pic of mine.

 

Thank you for taking the time to spell all of this out. My head is spinning because I’m tired and annoyed that this is even something that needs to be dealt with. I will take a look at the website with fresh eyes at a later date.

Checked in with dealer today and their allocated Prius/Primes have been removed from allocation. Because of the recall they aren’t even allowed to sell the used 2023 Prime they have sitting on the lot. What a mess.

 

Thanks for taking the time to spell this out. This website was pointed out to me before. : / I guess I have some resistance and fear about this process. I will take a look again when I’m less tired. Not only do I want to avoid a decrease in ground clearance, I also don’t want the tires to look funny. I finally saw an LE in person and the tires looked too small. It might also be the all black wheel cover that’s throwing me off.

 

You don't want to increase ground clearance significantly, because that would reduce wheel well clearance.

Here's my summary list of sizes I came up with while investigating. Numbers in brackets are percentage difference of diameter compared to standard 19" and 17" respectively. I didn't go very wide here - I believe I was constraining to stuff that would work with 6.5" rims, to stay compatible with standard sizes in future. So no overlap with otatrant's wide tyre list above.

But that's another constraint that causes issues - third-party wheels tend to be wider, and it's actually very hard to find 17x6.5 or 19x6.5 anyway...

195/60R17 (-1.9/0): Standard 17" size (1.9% smaller than 19")
205/55R17 (-3/-1.3): Common size, bit small
205/60R17 (0/+1.8): Perfect match for 19" diameter, but rare
215/55R17 (-1.5/+0.4): Good diameter match, common. (My winter tyre choice)
215/60R17 (+1.9/+4.0): Big, less common than better 215/55
225/50R17 (-3.0/-1.4): Small, no more common than better 225/55
225/55R17 (+0.3/+2.0): Good match for 19" diameter, not very common. Getting a bit wide.

195/50R19 (0/+1.8): Standard 19" size (1.8% bigger than 17")
205/50R19 (+1.5/+3.0): Very rare, bit big
215/45R19 (-0.4/+1.5): Rarer than 195/50? Not compatible with 6.5" rims.
215/50R19 (+3.0/+5.0): Common, but too big. Toyota here stopped offering them after snow clearance issues.
225/45R19 (+1.1/+2.9): Available. Not compatible with 6.5" rims

 

Wow! Thanks for sharing all of this. I’m not trying to choose wheels/tires to increase ground clearance. I just don’t want to switch to a tire that ends up decreasing ground clearance. I doubt I will have the chance to add a lift but it’s something I’ve thought about a few times over the years of drinking my Gen 2.

 

Clearance on the G5 is a little bit better than the G2, at least with the 19" wheels. Can't remember if 17" wheels were better. Approach/departure angles also pretty good too.

 

Had a flat today on my LE, here in Connecticut estimated they will be able to get the new 17" tire in about 5 days. Not great but feel like I dodged a much bigger headache if it had been the 19" tires.

 

If you’re shipping tires at Costco: they’ll only install stock spec’d.