Kia Niro EV Spare Tire Kit

Discussion in 'Kia Niro' started by MartyDow, Jul 30, 2019.

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  1. Pazportodos

    Pazportodos New Member

    After encountering an unrepairable flat on a lonely stretch of FWY and frustrated about the limitations of no spare and a temporary spare, I found an OE wheel online and I now have a real spare. After 3-4 months, I’ve seen no discernible reduction in range. (The heater, on the other hand ...)
    The photos show you can store the wheel flipped either way and that you can cover it back up. (Leaving all the cover supports surrounding tire unfastened allows this placement to work.
    Commuting with confidence ...
     

    Attached Files:

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  3. Think about it like this. The load of the car (and here is the simplifying assumption) is evenly distributed on all four wheels when it is flat on the ground. If one corner is lifted, that distribution won't change if the car is not at all free rotate around the contact of the jack. If it is free to slip, the load on the high corner will be lower, with more of the weight on the lower corners.

    Think about the extreme case where the car has been jacked up to the point that it is nearly on its side. At this point, nearly ALL the weight is on the lower side, and the jack only has to supply sufficient force to keep it balanced.

    Here is a stack exchange solution of the simplified problem of an inclined linear beam (the image is just a teaser. follow the link and read.)

    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/350023/distribution-of-weight-of-an-inclined-object
    [​IMG]
     
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  4. MartyDow

    MartyDow Active Member

    So, David, the answer is "Yes," I guess?
     
  5. MartyDow

    MartyDow Active Member

    Paz, could you please expand on "leaving all the cover supports surrounding the tire unfastened," please? Did you unscrew them so they're just sitting in the well? Thanks...
     
  6. Pazportodos

    Pazportodos New Member

    Yes, they are all in place but not screwed down. I believe they could be, but I’d need them to flex a bit to pull out the spare.

    Actually, I’ve been driving on the spare since I got It; a couple months now. I wanted to test everything (new jack, handle, spare) so i changed the tire and just haven’t made the time to change it back.


    Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
     
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  8. Kiastuff's kit is out of stock. Does anyone know how long it has been this way? (e.g. worth waiting or should I find someplace else?)
     
  9. MartyDow

    MartyDow Active Member

    You can order from any KIA dealer; it's an OEM part...
     
  10. Spare arrived. Ordered from http://www.oemkiasuperstore.com. Came from Deland Kia, which I note is one of the sellers of these on eBay. $280 US, shipping included. Fits perfectly. An EOM goop kit with compressor runs $120.

    At that price why is this not standard or an add-on option?
    It can't be a weight range concern...the whole thing *maybe* weighs 30 lbs .
     
  11. I was talking to my brother about the why no spare tire question, and we started wondering about the weight, so he asked me what the curb weight is, (3854 lbs according to Edmunds) and I told him and he asked if that is the weight when it is fully charged or when the battery is empty .

    So I worked it out. 64 kWh of potential energy will add ~2.56 micrograms of weight to the vehicle. That is ton more than I expected.

    64 kWh is a lotta energy: 230.4 million Joules = 50 kg of TNT (1 300,000th of the first atomic bomb used in war)
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
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  13. MartyDow

    MartyDow Active Member

    Excellent question. I have no excellent answer. One might also ask, at this price range, why no hood struts, frunk, power liftgate,, 12 volt socket or courtesy light switch in cargo area, all of which I had to acquire aftermarket and install myself. I am hopeful that these features will be found in the EV6 when it arrives....
     
  14. blue_door

    blue_door Member

    The reason for no spare is the same reason we get halogen headlights and no auto-dimming rearview mirror: cost savings. Nothing really more to read into that I think.
     
  15. davidtm

    davidtm Active Member

    Which is the equivalent energy to roughly 2 gal of gasoline. That's how energy dense dino juice is.

    (It also amazes me that we get the range we do on only 2 gals of gas equivalent energy.)
     
  16. Danhen

    Danhen Active Member

    Is not the reason the car is in this price range the cost of the battery? Other than that (and the electric motor), you pretty much have a car costing in the low $20's, where you will often see things like missing like hood struts and power liftgates, etc.

    I have to think Hyundai held down R&D costs by basing the Kona EV largely off the ICE Kona. But unfortunately that means tradeoffs like the frunk. And not sure spending R&D to add things like hood struts and power liftgates is a priority for most buyers. Of course they are nice to have, but the cost of the car versus the ICE equivalent is already an issue for lots of buyers. No doubt Hyundai felt a need to cap the cost of the car somewhere to try to lose less buyers due to price.
     
  17. Yamahamx91

    Yamahamx91 New Member

    Paz, now that it’s been a while, any updates on range loss??
     
  18. The spare tire weighs maybe 30 lbs. Any range loss is going to be comparable to an infant with a car seat or a few bags of groceries.

    I just took a long road trip to Colorado with my spare tire in the back. Did I experience range loss? Did I perhaps arrive at some chargers with 43.5 miles of range left instead of 44? Entirely possible, and impossible to determine with all the other variables (like wether I floored it once because traffic was heavy when I merged). Any range loss is buried in the noise


     
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  19. Yamahamx91

    Yamahamx91 New Member

    Thanks for the response David.

    I ask because I recently had to use my compact spare and it was rumbling when I drove. When I got my tire replaced, they told me the spare was not the right one for my car and was scraping my brake caliper. There are scratches inside the rim that show it definitely was hitting in spots (see pics, third one to show part number on the rim). Upon talking with the dealership parts department, despite this car having 17” wheels, the only compact spare offered by Kia for the Niro is 16”. So they basically said they can’t do anything for me. They claim it won’t damage the car other than cosmetically but seems negligent to sell a spare that doesn’t properly fit.

    I urge anyone who got the compact spare to check.
     

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  20. Shark

    Shark Active Member

    I could be wrong, but I thought I read somewhere the spare tire kit has a limitation with the EV model in that it won't fit the rear axle correctly because of the size of the EV's rear axle brake calipers, and that the workaround is to use it only on the front axle. Which unfortunately means if you have a rear flat, you need to first replace one of the front tires with the spare and then replace the flat with the removed front tire.

    Guess that scenario is still preferable to having to get a tow if the tire sealer kit will not work, and then trying to find a replacement tire, which I would not expect the average garage or tire store to have in stock ready to go.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2021
  21. Yamahamx91

    Yamahamx91 New Member

    huh, no idea where you heard/read that? I did put it on the rear and now I’m curious about this theory of it fitting on the front…would certainly be a pain in the butt with a scissor Jack on the side of the road but better than the drive I had with it on the rear.
     
  22. Shark

    Shark Active Member

    This is not where I saw it, but the attached seems to confirm it and seems to offer an alternate solution:

    http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/donut/
     
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  23. I read the same thing someplace in these forums. Seems plausible. The EV is significantly heavier. Might have needed a beefier braking system to meet stopping standards. This is the kind of thing that happens when a car is an ICE made into an electric instead of engineered from the ground up. I love my Niro, and this is just the way it is...
     

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