2025 Toyota Camry Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Busts All the Spare Tire Myths

The all-new 2025 Camry hybrid-electric vehicle enters a new generation this year. The list of what makes the new Camry special is long and impressive, starting with every trim having a hybrid-electric powertrain. However, in the four press releases that Toyota has put out, one special thing about the new Camry goes unmentioned - that every trim comes with a spare tire. The new Camry hybrid-electric vehicle having a spare in 2025 helps to bust a few myths about spares that armchair vehicle experts like to perpetuate. 

Spare Tire Myth 1 - New Vehicles Don’t Have Spares Anymore
While many individual models do lack a spare tire, almost every top-selling vehicle sold in America has a spare tire. Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado, Ram 1500, GMC Sierra, Camry, Accord, Civic, RAV4, Forester, CX-5, and the list goes on. Most automakers do put a spare tire into the top-selling models and top-selling trims of those models that they produce. Not every one. But the bulk of new vehicles sold today still have a spare. The new 2025 Camry will land on the top-20 most popular models, as it has for many decades. And every trim will have a spare. 

Spare Tire Myth 2 - Electrified Vehicles Can’t Have Spares - The Battery Takes the Space a Spare Would Use
When we last counted up the EVs with spares, our list had a dozen models on it. These are battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Electrified includes hybrid. Every 2025 Camry is a hybrid-electric vehicle, and each will have a traction battery. The new Camry hybrid-electric vehicle helps to disprove the myth that the traction battery has anything to do with a spare tire. Putting a heavy battery in a trunk up high and behind the centerline of the vehicle is always a bad idea, which is why almost every electrified vehicle design avoids that and allows for the spare to be where you would expect it to be. Under the cargo floor, in the case of the 2025 Camry. 

Spare Tire Myth 3 - All-Wheel Drive Takes Up the Space Where the Spare Would Go
One argument that seems to make sense at first, but really doesn’t is “Vehicles with all-wheel drive don’t have room for a spare.” We get it. All-wheel drive requires more stuff in back, where spares go. However, this is just a silly argument. Vehicles like the all-wheel drive Ford Bronco Sport Badlands and Subaru Forester Wilderness not only include spares, they are full-size spares. There is plenty of room to package both all-wheel drive and a spare, as the AWD 2025 Camry proves. 

Spare Tire Myth 4 - Fuel Economy Standards Mean Spares Must Go Due to Weight
The weight of a vehicle is directly correlated to its energy consumption. This is a fact. However, with modern vehicles weighing 3,000 to as much as 10,000 pounds, and many popular vehicles such as the Camry weighing in at between 3,500 and 4,000 pounds, a thirty pound spare is not a meaningful weight addition. In fact, a spare tire can weigh less than a vehicle’s audio speakers. The new Camry will weigh between 3,450 and 3,682 pounds, depending on its trim and powertrain.  

Unfortunately, we were unable to make the Toyota media launch of the new 2025 Camry hybrid-electric vehicle. We first found out that Toyota’s new 2025 Camry had a spare tire from Raiti's Rides on YouTube. Joseph Raiti is one of our very favorite video reviewers. You can see Joseph point out the spare tire at timestamp 20:30 of the above video. Joseph was also kind enough to offer us the top of page image in our story. Raiti's Rides is one of few review outlets that takes the time to look for and report on spare tires in test vehicles. 

It’s refreshing to see that Toyota has opted not to shave a few dollars off its cost to produce the new 2025 Camry hybrid-electric vehicle at the expense of owner safety and convenience. We are unfortunately seeing many other automakers do so more and more as time passes. 
 

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on Linkedin and follow his work at our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ Grammarly grammar and punctuation software when proofreading. 

Image of spare tire in 2025 Toyota Camry courtesy of Joseph Raiti. Image of spare tire mentioned on spec sheet courtesy of Toyota.