So how easy is that?

My VW Tiguan came without a spare wheel. I bought one from a specialist provider, but of course the boot flow now flops, so whilst I was having some other work done, I mentioned this to the "Spares Manager".

He said that they don't offer a spare wheel because it would then be different to the car submitted for emissions and fuel economy testing... .. so yes they could provide one as an aftermarket add-on but not as original equipment....

... sounded pretty weird to me.....

Dave

One reason for a spare wheel delete is because it reduces weight, which reduces emissions. eg if the vehicle was at 100gCO2/km it's very handy to get it to 99gCO2/km because then it (was) in a lower tax bracket.

I'm now envisioning racks of spare wheels next to the checkout in the dealership, so you can add one to your trolley while you're waiting to pay...

Theo

No. They use a DC motor which is driven one way to apply the parking brake and the current reversed to release the brake. As the motor reaches the end of its travel and stalls, the circuit sees the current rise significantly and removes the power.

You can self-service the pads yourself by using a 12v battery and a couple of wires pushed into the connector to exercise the motor.

Mine has no spare and bloody awful runflats. The space where the spare wheel well would be is mainly occupied by the 15-20L piss-tank for the Urea based AdBlue diesel exhaust fluid.

Lots of cost savings. No tools, no captive nut to secure tools and spare wheel and more importantly, no well-defined jacking points. All you can do is look for something that appears pretty strong, and shove a jack under it. And with a tyre flat, that's not always easy. Less ground clearance, more aerodynamic.

Not having well-defined jacking points seems like a damn-fool idea to me.

That may be an alternate method, but certainly on VW/AUDI there's a command to back the brake pads off for replacement.

Well yes there may well be, but I got that method when I owned an A5 3.0 SE from watching a video on how to service the brakes on an A5 front and rear. I seem to remember the description went "you can use VCDS but this is just so much easier..."