Hello, Just trying to gain some perspective here as I was at both dealers today and for the first time laid eyes and touched the interior of both the Ioniq 5 and ID4 and I was greatly disappointed with the interior quality of the Ioniq 5 in terms of material choices. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Ioniq looks good, tech is good, and specs are good. It’s pretty much scratchy hard plastic everywhere, even in high touch areas like door armrests. In contrast I checked out 2 ID4s afterwards and was pretty much “blown” away with the materials used - when having just seen the Ioniq 5.
Is this normal? EVs aren’t cheap vehicles and I understand the big part of cost are the electrical components like the battery, but the interior quality alone is greatly steering me towards an ID4 instead of the Ioniq 5… Along with an apparent 3 year wait for the Ioniq 5 AWD in Canada.
Drum brakes are great for vehicles where that’s all they need. You’ll find lots of 60s and 70s cars still running their original drums long after every disc brake variant of the car has had 2 or 3 sets of calipers and discs. They hold up better in northern climates and areas where roads are salted. They can’t get rocks or debris into them on rough patches of road. They can have plenty of stopping power when coupled with regeneration and shouldn’t have heat cycling issues since they aren’t being used much if at all.
I don’t see a downside to them other than them being an older technology. Older tech isn’t always necessarily inferior.
I can’t accept going back to 60s or 70s technology for something that affects safety as well as performance.
My 2012 ICE needed a brake job at 75,000 miles and again this summer at 150,000 miles, and I’m fine with that.
Drum brakes have much less stopping power and also tend to be much more likely to lock up during emergency/evasive maneuvers. In this case, older tech is absolutely inferior.
Hell, my BICYCLES have had disc brakes since, like, forever.
(Seriously, most bikes made after 1999-2000 have disc brakes)
The ID.4 stops from 60-0 in 119 feet vs. 126 feet on a Tiguan that is lighter and has all-around disc brakes, so the drum brakes don’t really affect braking performance. I never once felt that they were insufficient in our ID.4.
Along with all the benefits u/Infinityaero listed, drum brakes create less drag, and therefore more regen can be done on the rear axle compared to an EV with rear disc brakes.