These EVs And Hybrids Come With A Spare Tire In The US

A spare tire is your plan B, your backup when you get a flat in the middle of nowhere. It takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to change, and allows you to be on your way relatively quickly. These days, though, with the prevalence of AAA and roadside assistance, more and more manufacturers are removing the spare tire from cars, especially for EVs and hybrid vehicles. Instead, many brands expect you to repair your flat tire using kits, a method that is slapdash and "make-do". These patch kits will last just long enough for you to get to a garage or gas station.

Also, for electric vehicles and hybrids, adding a spare tire adds unwanted weight, reducing efficiency. The battery modules and cells in an EV (or hybrid) vehicle are quite heavy, so manufacturers take drastic steps for weight reduction, and one of these steps is to remove the spare tire and the plethora of assorted accessories. That saves weight, sure, but it puts drivers at a disadvantage should the vehicle get a flat tire — so people are being forced to choose between EVs or spare tires.

However, there are still a few EVs and hybrid cars that come with spares, even if you're not really supposed to drive for too long using the spare tires. Here are 10 electric or hybrid cars and SUVs that still come with a spare tire in 2025.

Perhaps the most extreme case of weight saving is Tesla — who have never shipped a car from the factory with a spare tire. Instead, Tesla owners have, in the past, had to cut away parts of their trunks to fit in full-sized spares,though this is not the case with the Tesla Cybertruck. 

Even so, the Cybertruck's spare tire situation isn't all that great, given that it still does not ship with the spare from the factory — not even as an option. Instead, you scan a QR code online and get taken to the Tesla mobile app — Android or iOS — and can place the order for your spare wheel. The process is fairly seamless, albeit a bit long winded, but that's not the issue. The real issue is the price — $1,250 at the time of writing. 

To compound the problem, many owners on Tesla forums are reporting that you need aftermarket parts if you don't want to put your spare in the bed. Even Tesla's own marketing pictures (shown below) show the Cybertruck spare wheel going in the 6x4 bed of the truck, instead of under: 

Tesla

However, the one saving grace of the Cybertruck's horrendously priced spare is that, for the money, you do get everything you would need to change a wheel. You get a tire pressure monitoring system, the tire mounted on a full-sized spare wheel, and a toolkit that has a hydraulic lift jack, gloves, lug nut remover hex tool, and a wheel cover remover. And, when compared to rival EV firm Rivian's offering — priced at $1,575 and only available over the phone — the Cybertruck spare holds a little more value.

In 1980, the Toyota Camry debuted in Japan and arrived in the U.S. by 1983. At the time, no one could have predicted that it would become the

best-selling car in the U.S. by a wide margin

— a title it held for many, many years. Only in recent times has it been eclipsed by another Toyota — the RAV4 — but still retains the title of best-selling sedan in the country. Given the phenomenal sales success, it's only natural that Toyota decided to bring a Hybrid Camry onto the lineup, a move it took back in 2007. That may seem like several universes ago, but the Toyota hybrid system (THS) actually debuted with the Prius in 1997. 

The hybrid tech had a full decade of refinement before it arrived in the Camry, and it has remained an option ever since. Cut to today — and the well-reviewed 2025 Camry is no longer available as an internal combustion engine model, as all new Camrys sold from 2025 onwards will be hybrid-only. Owners will be happy to hear that all trims of the Camry will include a spare tire stored in the boot. Although, we should mention clearly that this tire is a "space saver" model, so it is not intended to be a full replacement. A space saver slim-profile spare is intended to get you on your way, and should ideally be replaced with a repaired or new full-size tire as soon as possible.

The RAV4 — short for "Recreational Active Vehicle with 4-wheel Drive" — is now officially the best selling car in the U.S. across all categories, eclipsing even the legendary F150. In 2024 alone, the Toyota RAV4 sold about 475,200 units — which equates to about one every minute of every day. Also, those numbers make the RAV4 officially the best-selling SUV in the U.S. for eight years running, an honor that it is sure to retain next year, having already sold 41,500 RAV4s in the first quarter of 2025 alone. In addition to those crazy numbers, Toyota is also having a lot of success with its hybrid sales — hybrids now account for more than 50% of Toyota-Lexus sales figures as of Q1 2025. 

For instance, in 2024, the RAV4 HEV was up by about 30%, and the RAV4 PHEV was up by about 20% overall. And undoubtedly the popularity is because Toyota finds their niche for a product, finds features that work, and just sticks with them. One of the longest-standing features on a RAV4 has been the humble spare tire — I even have one on my 2018. However, just like with the Camry, the RAV4 spare is a space-saver temporary tire, but at least it's included. And for a base price of $32,300 for a new 2025 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid base model, I'd expect to have all the bells and whistles — hardware-wise, at least.

The Kia Sorento was introduced back in March of 2002, when it made its debut at the New York International auto show, alongside the then-new Kia Rio and Kia Cinco. Today, the Sorento serves as a midsize crossover between the smaller $28,690 2025 Kia Sportage and the more premium $36,390 2025 Kia Telluride. When it launched in 2002, the Sorento had a 3.5-liter V6 engine that made 192 horsepower, and was mated to either a four-speed automatic or a five-speed manual gearbox. It was reliable, priced well, and pretty bog standard. 

Today, the 2025 Kia Sorento is fairly near the top of its class, with things like 20 standard driver assist features, three-row seating, 40 cubic feet of space in the trunk, remote start, climate control, shareable digital keys, and loads more. The engine in the Sorento of today is also fantastic — both trims on the 2025 Kia Sorento Hybrid get the same 1.6-liter four-cylinder turbocharged engine making 258 lbs-ft of torque and 227 hp combined, of which 59 hp comes from the full parallel hybrid system. Among the myriad features offered on the Sorento HEV is a spare tire on both trims, included as standard. However, again, it is a space saver and not a full replacement set.

The Lexus LX range has the company's biggest, grandest, and most expensive models, all of which have been based — quite liberally — on the Toyota Land Cruiser. Essentially, the Lexus LX line was designed to be a luxury version of the Land Cruiser, and has achieved decent sales success in the U.S. as of late, with sales increasing 34% in 2024. Now, given how pricey the LX line is, number-wise they are nowhere near other Toyota models, with 754 units sold in 2024, up from 2023's 585 units — but that's what sales figures look like when the cheapest version of a car is priced at $93,915! 

However, the 2025 Lexus LX would naturally come with pretty much every creature comfort you could think of, and are offered in a 409 hp non-hybrid and a 457 hp hybrid version. There are four trims offered on the 2025 Lexus 700h, which is the name of the hybrid version: Luxury, Ultra Luxury, F-Sport, and Overtrail. The Overtrail is the most "affordable" hybrid of the lot, starting at $115,350, and the Ultra Luxury trim starts at an eye watering MSRP of $141,350. Power for all trims comes from a twin-turbocharged V6 hybrid engine making, as mentioned, 457 hp and 583 lbs-ft of torque, that can get this 5,945 pound behemoth to a top speed of 130 MPH. All trims include everything you'd want from an off-roader — even if the maximum gradient that this will see is a mall ramp — and yes, that includes a full-size spare tire mounted underneath the car.

The Land Rover Discovery is a nameplate that has been around pretty much forever at this point, having been launched at the end of the cold war in 1989 — and has lived on ever since. A great many models have carried the vaunted nameplate through the decades, like the LR2, LR3, LR4, vanilla Discovery, and, most recently, the Discovery Sport. The Sport version of this much-beloved off-roader began production in October 2014 with a radical design change from what Land Rover had been running with at the time. Despite sales success of the hybrid electric Range Rover models, which were hybridized way back in 2013, the Discovery didn't get an HEV or even mild hybrid trim until as recently as 2021.

Today, all trims on the 2025 Land Rover Discovery are available with at least some form of a mild hybrid or plug-in hybrid powertrain. The main hybrid engine choices are a diesel D165 that makes 163 hp, a D200 diesel that makes 204 hp, a gasoline P250 making 249 hp, and two other petrol engines making 269 hp and 309 hp respectively. The first three engines are mild hybrids, and the last two are PHEV engines. On all trims of your Discovery — not just the S — you'll find a spare tire. Land Rover calls this a "reduced section alloy spare wheel," which is just marketing speak for — you guessed it — a space saver tire.

The second Lexus on our list is the 2025 Lexus RX350, which shares a platform called the GA-K with the Toyota Highlander and Grand Highlander. Many people tend to think that the RX-line from Lexus is based on the RAV4 from Toyota, but this is not the case despite the visual similarities — the Lexus version of the RAV4 is part of the NX series. Today, the RX350 is available in a grand total of eight different trims, compared to the non-hybrid RX350 that only gets six trim levels to choose from. The hybrid version gets an EPA-estimated mileage of 36 MPG, which is certainly not something to scoff at for a midsize crossover SUV. 

For the 2025 model year we get slightly updated styling, the usual suite of safety features, which Lexus calls its "Safety System+ 3.0" that includes lane departure alerts, lane keep assist, pedestrian detection, road sign detection, radar cruise control, and automatic high beams. And yes, all trims and models on the RX line — not just the RX350 — get a space-saver spare tire. The RX350 uses 165 mm spares with a 70% treadwall, and the RX500 uses 165 mm spares with a much taller 90% treadwall. Both versions mount the spare in the boot space.

The F150 had, for a very long time, been the best selling vehicle stateside, until the RAV4 snatched the title away from it. However, when the U.S. was showing intentions of moving to EVs, the F150 was among the first utilitarian pickup trucks to offer a fully electric version, with production beginning in early 2022. When it debuted, the F150 Lighting full EV had a base price under $40,000 at launch, and just three years in, the price has shot up 50% — with a new F150 Lightning starting at a base MSRP of $62,995. And that's for the entry-level trim, called the XLE; the highest Platinum trim has a starting price of $84,995. 

For a vehicle that was once the backbone of the American economy — the working man's truck — those prices are ridiculous. However, you do get a lot of truck for the money, with 360-degree cameras, zone-wise LED lighting, heated side mirrors, power windows, dual-zone climate control, eight-way power adjustable seats, and a 12-inch touchscreen as standard across the board. Higher trims add heated front seats, voice recognition, a 15.5-inch touchscreen, hands-free driving on 97% of U.S. and Canadian highways, a power liftgate and a whole lot of other goodies. A rather unwelcome change for the 2025 Ford F150 Lightning is that it no longer has the spare tire as standard, instead giving consumers a tire sealant kit, though it seems that the spare tire is still a paid upgrade that can be optioned on the vehicle.

The CX-line from Mazda mainly consists of their midsize CX-70 and CX-90 offerings, with the 70 being a dual-row, and the 90 being a three-row unit and the largest SUV currently in Mazda's lineup. Both are fantastic value for money options, though each falls short in one area or another compared to the competition. For instance, the CX-90 has been said to have a rather harsh ride, extremely tight third-row seating that defeats the purpose of having a third row, and the topmost trim on the 90 is almost 50% more expensive than the base . And the 2025 Mazda PHEV CX-70 is literally in the same price bracket as a base model CX-90, which no doubt ends up in a situation where the 90 cannibalizes some of the 70s market share.

Incidentally, the Mazda CX-70 is literally just a CX-90 with the third row removed in favor of a lot more boot space, which could potentially explain the similarity and closeness in pricing and performance figures. For 2025, the CX-90 starts at $38,045, and the CX-70 is actually more expensive, with a base MSRP of $40,445. The 70 uses 275 mm all-season tires, and the included spare tire is a 155 mm temporary unit. On the CX-90 it's exactly the same story, with the permanent tires being 275 mm, and the temporary spare that comes with all trims being 155 mm.

The Jeep Wrangler 4xe is currently the only electrified, open-air SUV on the market, and was introduced in 2021, with that model named the "First Edition". It has a base MSRP of $50,695, and comes with a four-cylinder engine displacing 2.0 liters, as well as two e-motors that draw power from a 17 kWh battery. The hybrid system is supposedly quite efficient, with Jeep estimating that the Wrangler 4xe will get about 49 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe) when driving. You also get the option to drive only using electric power, though you only get about 21 miles of range in full-electric mode, which is why owners would mainly reserve that for driving around the city. 

From the factory you get a level one charging cable that will replenish your battery in about half a day, or you could opt for the $583 level two charger upgrade that would fully charge the battery from dead to 100% in two and a half hours. On most Wrangler 4xe models, as with the non-electrified trims, the spare tire is mounted on the rear swing-open tailgate. However, certain models could also have it stored under the cargo trapdoor in the boot in some cases. As with most other models on this list, the spare tire is a temporary one, with owners reporting it on forums to be 175 mm wide, or 245 mm wide in some cases.

And with that, we come to the end of our list of ten EVs and hybrid cars that still come with a spare tire in 2025. However, with many companies opting to provide tire repair kits or sealant kits in lieu of an actual tire, who knows how long these models will remain on our list.