Good article, although it has
Good article, although it has a few holes.
First off, the claim that eliminating the spare tire saves manufacturers weight ignores the fact that runflat tires are heavier than conventional tires ... the net weight savings is essentially zero. What's probably the more likely truth here is that OEM's like to have a little more freedom of design of the volume that would otherwise be occupied by a spare tire wheel well.
Second, what this survey wasn't able to capture is how many customers are now already savvy enough to avoid purchasing brands who are only offering runflat tires on their product.
I fell into this cagatory last year, having passed over BMW (and also Mercedes) to buy a competitive product whose product didn't "feature" runflats. While this is a personal anecdote, it does nevertheless indicate a consumer trend of avoiding such flawed product entirely, which represents a lost sale for those OEMs that offer consumers no reasonable alternatives to runflats.