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It fully depends where you drive @fancurve. In countries where you drive hundreds of miles to the next town you should of course have a spare tyre available in the car. When you drive only 5 miles to the next town you must not mandatorily have a spare tyre on board.

Rocky20 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:23 am

It fully depends where you drive @fancurve. In countries where you drive hundreds of miles to the next town you should of course have a spare tyre available in the car. When you drive only 5 miles to the next town you must not mandatorily have a spare tyre on board.

That is the point. It fully depends on where you drive. In the Australian Outback without any spare tyre is almost criminel. For driving in the area of Washington DC you don`t need any spare tyre.

In the frame of a recent car rental from Silvercar I noticed on the hotel parking in the morning that one of the tires was flat. After having called the AAA a technician the car had to be towed as no spare tyre was in the car. Of course in parallel I called the rental agent and reported the situation. Silvercar picked me up to get a replacement vehicle. The good thing was to be still in the area of LAX otherwise I don`t know what Silvercar would have done. I can imagine that otherwise I would have had a real issue.
After having read the above posts for me it is still not yet clear if it is common for car rental companies to have only cars without spare tires availabel?
Are there car rental companies which have cars with spares and if yes which ones?

As already mentiond by other users I don`t think that it depends on car rental companies. The root cause for this issue is more a car manufacturer policy to cut costs. Therefore they do no more spend any costs for spare tires in new cars. Probably they think that such a measurement will be the key to save a company.

The issue with the non availability of spare tires in new cars is not only restricted to car rental companies but also for privately owned cars. They are in case of a flat tire confronted with the same problem as car rental users. For me a stupid decision of the car manufacturers.

One of the worst decisions of the car industry to reduce cost by abandonment of a spare tire.
Today ties are reliable but they can be still dammaged without any influence of the driver i.e. through a nail etc.

In case I would have an issue with a tire I fully rely to be a AAA member. I never would rely on the assistance from the car rental company. Compared for what it provides, AAA is an insanely good value.

But in countries where you cannot rely on well performing Automobile Associations like in Africa or somewhere in Asia, the situation in case of a flat tire is much more difficult. Any car without a spare tire on board is something stupid from my point of view.

Honestly speaking did anyone already need a spare tire when driving with a rental car? I didn`t!

I did neither need any spare tire till today. I only would like to to vane one on board when driving a long distance through i.e. a desert.