Tires size possible deal breaker on 2023 Prius?

So I just got off the phone with Michelin. The supervisor told me this 19” Primacy tire isn’t currently being manufactured right now. It should start up again in a month or so with estimated stock available mid June or July. No issues with materials etc. They simply don’t do continuous production for a tire that isn’t in high demand. She is not hearing any complaints about poor quality and blowouts etc. I know it’s primarily the low profile that’s causing the issue but I hope people with blowouts put a call into Michelin so there is some documentation accumulating. She was surprised to hear that dealers don’t have the OEM tire available. : /

 

@GeoJ
@Downrange
Speaking of coincidence, I had an appointment at my Toyota dealer for removing my winter tires, while waiting, I saw a client entering the service desk with a Prime 19inch wheel a blown tire mounted on it. The wheel was also damaged.

I waited for him to return at is 2024 Prime in the parking lot. He was very kind to discuss his adventure.

In a nutshell , the car is brand new and his millage is 800KM (500 miles) The incident arrived 300KM away from home in a region with very poor Cell phone coverage ……no spare and unable to inflate the thing with the compressor with the liquid seal………so after being towed to the nearest Toyota dealer it was impossible to get a new tire and wheel for a few days ….so he called his daughter and asked her to bring her 17 inch wheel mounted with her Michelin winter tire..

He loves the new car, but he thinks the 17 inches would have been better but not offered on his higher trim model.He also is thinking of travelling with a spare and some tools nedded to replace a flat tire like the old days when he travels in some remote region.
p.s his daughter has a 2023 Prime and has her winter tires

 

How to kill the Prius: when sales are down to a pittance of what they were a decade back, come out with a "sporty" Prius, give it an obscure tire size, on a ridiculously oversize rim. Oh, and no spare.

 

One of my 17” Toyo tires exploded at 70mph last Friday. The car handled it well but the tire has a huge puncture near the edge and a sidewall bulge.
I ordered a replacement from America’s Tire last Friday and it is arriving this Thursday.
At least the 17s are somewhat available but when these wear down a little more I’ll switch to 215s.

 

Yikes! Glad to hear car handled it well. Could have been a really bad situation.

 

I never got a flat in any of my three Prius

 

According to the chef engineer, seems it was a design driven decision lol (skip to 2:28 and 3:06):

 

Dang, you folks got me worried....my wife is looking to replace her 2017 with a 2024 or 2025 XLE with the 19" tires.

Discount Tire only has 2 options and one is $260, Michelin Primacy rated at 45,000 mile (I believe that's more than tires for my Tundra!!) The cheaper is a Toyo Tire for $172 with no mileage estimates.

So has anybody purchased real spare tires for their Prius? (I got one for my 2021 but, of course, it won't fit the 2024)

 

Yes there are detailed posts about the configurations for a spare tire that work with the XLE even the AWD version. Toyota dealerships have the parts. I’m still waiting on my XLE AWD and somewhat grateful it has been stalled. I’ll probably get the tire warranty unless I get brave enough to switch out the wheels. I don’t have anyone to rely on when I get a flat except AAA but they will be useless unless I get a spare tire.

I’ve encountered a few people including women who are really enjoying their Gen 5 especially the improved acceleration. One guy said he’s finding the AWD has noticeably improved his driving in the rain.

 

Tire Rack is currently showing the Toyo and Michelin Primacy as having more stock coming on 5/7 and 5/10, respectively. I'm not an expert on tires or logistics but I assume for less popular sizes they make them in batches, so they they made some in March or April that are en route to suppliers and in a few more weeks they'll make another batch. We can only hope that each batch is larger than the last in order to meet increasing demand.

 

Thanks. I did see the back order date. Strange that Michelin told me there won’t be any available until mid June or July.

 

I read on another forum that a 2023 Prius owner purchased:

Used Camry alloy rims, tire options were
205/65R16
or
215/55R17 - but there might be a clearance issue

 

Don't get hung up on the factory tire size. I recently mounted these on my Prime SE without any issues :
Pirelli P Zero All Season 215/55R17 94V Performance Tire

 

As I expected most to do from day 1

 

You'd think

 

Not exactly.

The increase in overall wheel size was a smart design decision, yes. But using super low profile tires does not help any design choices at all (except in some people's mind, aesthetics).

Because the same diameter but higher profile 17" wheels/tires are far superior in ride quality, reliability, replaceability, fuel efficiency, and EV efficiency (in the case of a prime).

 

Not sure if you would know the answer to this question. But, on various models of the gen5 prius, there are two tire sizes:
the higher profile 195/60 R17
and
the lower profile 195/50 R19

What is interesting to me is that the 19" tire/wheel combo is 1/2" bigger in diameter (about 2%) than the 17" tire/wheel combo.

Do you think that toyota calibrated the odometers, speedometers, and GOMs of the priuses with the bigger wheels to be slightly different than the calibration on the priuses with the smaller wheels (or vice-versa)? Because, if not, it seems that one of the trims would get far more accurate (or inaccurate) distance, speed, and range numbers than the other. Any thoughts?

 

These aren't scientific instruments with tight accuracy, and the laws recognize this with a liberal range of error allowed. The tires wearing down will change the accuracy of the meters. The tire size differences close enough to call them the same for calibration purposes.

Perhaps one trim is closer to the factory target setting, but the variance allowed by law, and will occur with use, are enough for the layman to not be concerned over it.

 

I don't know, but I would guess yes, on the grounds that the main dashboard unit clearly knows the trim's wheel + tyre size as part of the TPMS user interface - it offers the recommended pressure only for the tyre size originally fitted to the car.

I can't see any reason it wouldn't incorporate that knowledge in its other functions.

There are also suspension differences corresponding to the different wheel sizes (don't know what that entails, but you can see the different part numbers). A firmware tweak to a component that already has different firmware depending on wheel size is trivial by comparison.

 

Interesting.

In an effort to have drivers go slower, I have read that toyota fudges the speedometer reading already by a few percent. I assume that this is acceptable, but then to add to that intentional error another 2% seems like a lot to me. In one case, it would be make the driver go even slower (which then can get dangerous on freeways). And, in the other case, it would essentially negate toyota's safety fudge factor.

All very puzzling. In any case, 1/2" difference in total wheel diameter on fairly smallish wheels seems like a lot to ignore regarding the speedometer, odometer, GOM mpg, EV range, etc.