**The Frustrations of Using Electric Cars**

It's not all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to using electric cars. While they offer numerous benefits, such as reduced emissions and lower operating costs, there are also some quirks that can be frustrating for drivers. One common issue is the confusing layout of controls on the center console. As our host noted, "i mean look tesla is way ahead in terms of technology when it comes to early adopters they're doing things different and they started this nearly a decade ago right i mean we had a 2012 tesla model s and they changed lots of stuff and we gave them lots of kudos for it right". This sentiment is echoed by many electric car owners who have found that the non-intuitive design of their vehicle's controls can be infuriating.

**Regenerative Braking: A Complex System**

When it comes to regenerative braking, which captures kinetic energy and converts it into electrical energy to recharge the battery, there are some nuances to consider. As our host noted, "shekar from vancouver british columbia asks regarding crs testing of the volkswagen 84 since braking is more efficient at the front axle how much regenerative braking is there at the front and rear axles". Volkswagen was very forthcoming with their response, stating that all regen comes from the rear wheels. This makes sense, as a higher load point for one motor is more efficient in almost all situations.

**Torque Vectoring: A Missing Feature**

Another question posed by Shekar was about the presence of torque vectoring on the ID4. Unfortunately, it appears that this feature is not available on the ID4. Instead, Volkswagen uses electronic stability control (ESC) to control wheel slip and help induce a little bit of yaw, which can improve handling and traction. While this may seem like a less desirable solution, it's worth noting that anti-lock brakes are now ubiquitous in electric cars, and these systems will sense if there's any lockup from the rear and remedy that.

**The Evolution of Electric Car Design**

As our host noted, "i mean anyone who you know i mean if if you put if you just use the rear brakes and you have slick roads and you have icy roads it could be a problem". This is a great example of how electric cars are still evolving to address common issues. While we've made significant progress in developing anti-lock brakes and other safety features, there's always room for improvement.

**Conclusion**

Using an electric car can be a rewarding experience, but it's not without its challenges. From confusing control layouts to complex regenerative braking systems, there are many nuances to consider when driving an electric vehicle. By understanding these complexities, drivers can better appreciate the benefits and limitations of their vehicle and make the most of their electric car ownership experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back i'm keith barry i'm jake fisher and i'm mike monticello and this week we're going to talk about an electric car it's it's it's volkswagen's id4 this is a car that we have some information up about online at crcr.org so we finished putting it through our tests how did it do monty well so first of all yeah it's it's volkswagen's first dedicated long-range uh electric vehicle you know they had like the e-golf and stuff before but this is now on a true dedicated electric vehicle platform and it's kind of like a cross between uh a hatchback and an suv and you know overall it did pretty well i mean it's it's not a bad driving vehicle uh you know it's pretty quick uh it's got plenty of room inside pretty comfortable but uh it's got some really frustrating controls which i'm sure we're going to talk about and it's driving range you know so we drove what we originally drove a rented rear-wheel drive model from volkswagen which had 201 horsepower the one we tested was uh 295 horsepower with all-wheel drive and this one that the the rear wheel drive was pretty slow and you know we're used to electric vehicles being really zippy off the line and uh that rear wheel drive one was not that not that quick at all it was kind of shockingly sluggish this one felt much more normal it's pretty quick 0 to 60 in less than six seconds but uh its driving range is only 240 miles and you know when you think about the tesla model y which is you know a direct competitor is 326 miles that's a pretty big difference um but uh so so that's it's kind of like it's in a way almost sort of behind the times uh even though it's brand new but it all depends and we can get into this still about how you drive your electric vehicle right if you're not putting if you're not taking long trips it's not going to matter uh if you're just driving it you know if you have even even a moderately long commute to work it's going to be fine as long as you can charge at home every night but as far as how it drives it's a it's a pretty good driving little vehicle like i said good room decent handling not awesome handling if you're used to the way the tautness of a volkswagen it's a little different here they went more for you know it's it's a little soft through the turns it doesn't have that taut german car feel that we're used to you know if you think of you know jetta golf passat for years we've talked about how these cars are have that german taut feel and this doesn't have that you know so there's a little more body roll through corners than you might imagine for a volkswagen but it's got a in return it's got a pretty comfortable ride um and then and then a couple other things i noticed was the brake pedal feel and this is something we talk about with both electric vehicles and hybrids sometimes is that uh they have the sort of dead or either dead or and or spongy feel that makes it hard to modulate so in this car initially you press the brake pedal and there's not much happening and then you press it in further and it feels kind of spongy and then it seems like as you're getting close to stop now it's you know stopping more so now it's hard to modulate exactly like it feels like you're always having to adjust your brake pedal pressure which in a really most cars and a well-designed brake pedal you press on it and you can kind of gauge almost as soon as you start pressing on the brake pedal when you're going to you know you can keep that kind of consistent pedal pressure all the way through you can't do that with this vehicle they missed the boat on that um but anyway but it's still a pretty decent car overall except the controls are a disaster and i'll let jake is our controls guy one of our controls people he can go into that because they are a mess and and i think keith you'll agree just really frustrating aspect to use that probably would keep some people from buying this car or any volkswagen at this point because it's they're very similar to the ones that are in pretty much any volkswagen right now i i had my own experience with it but i'll save it until jake jake goes through uh jake what do you think here well i mean i'm gonna bore you because i'm gonna say the same thing i always say uh when it comes to you know monty's input but he's wrong as usual monty it's completely right on all counts i know i say it every time every episode i know aboard you but um no everything every mike exactly everything you said that's exactly what it is and it's a pretty good car but but why why are we having another of this genre why is everyone trying to be another model why because you're not going to be a model y you're not going to be a model a model 3 you're not gonna be a tesla because the tesla i mean it's it's sportier and it's got you know it's like they've they've gone down this list like okay well let's make it kind of like a small this size hatchback and it's got to be pretty powerful and but we're not going to quite the range um oh and controls well we better make those really different you know it's like it's almost like this is the the ingredients that that you do and it and i feel like it's a miss opportunity you know i mean how many years have we been seeing these concepts of the id buzz or the electric van i mean i mean they just keep on taunting with us i mean that would have been something new to the party i mean you can imagine like a little boxy van with you know more room inside no no we have to do another of the same genre and again it's it's doing the same good things it's making the same mistakes uh you talk about the controls and and this isn't just an id4 thing this is well actually fortunately it's not on a lot of volkswagens yet volkswagen has actually been really good when it comes to controls um really really simple controls but this is like the first of their new control system which we saw on the new gti and some of these new vehicles and it's it's just you know it's the same script you know let's put capacitive controls let's make it harder to find things let's you know who would want uh you know the temperature up and down to have an up or a down or something you see at night it's changed for change sake trying to be high tech but not making it better and that's just kind of disappointing it's not a bad vehicle i mean don't get me wrong um but i don't think it really brings a whole lot new to the party yeah i mean especially for the price uh one thing that is cool about it is you get three years of charging through electrify america which is kind of like uh you know that that might sway me away from you know the tesla supercharger network but but i know where the superchargers are and i know that they're probably going to work at least around here they're not usually crowded to the point that you can't get at them so i i think that's also another point in favor of well it's it's a point in favor but it's not something new i mean when tesla came out what did they what did they say free charging everywhere that was when they got into the game now they're put a little bit past that but again it's it's the script it's the same script but i i think something that really affected me was that i drove this for the first time back to back with the ioniq five and the onyx 5 is a car that changes absolutely everything about the car they could change because it's a built up from the ground ev there's more space there's like giant room for a bag next to you the console is different the interior materials are different it looks like the future but you get in the thing and there's a volume knob there's everything is exactly where you expect it to be they didn't change anything for change's sake to say i am i am electric i am new they changed everything else but the only things they kept were the things that work in other cars i think that's super cool i love the fact that i get into the into the ionic 5 and the dashboard is this flat panel with like carpet on it it looks i mean i love that i love the future i love the fact that this car is so different the id4 i get in and the only things that are different about it to me despite the fact that being uh from the ground up ev are the fact that the day i drove it um was a little wet i wasn't cold enough for gloves so i had you know bare hands open the door had a little water on my hand got in the car someone had left the radio turned up and i tried to turn it down and instead of a volume knob there's a slider and my slightly damp finger wouldn't register on the capacitive touch screen so i dry my hand off on my shirt and there's still some condensation on it so i'm rubbing it with my shirt trying to turn it down it's turning it up i turn on the flashers and i'm thinking there's there's gotta be i'm that guy in the infomercial there's gotta be a better way and every automaker in the world had that better way uh the fact and this is something it actually shares with the ioniq five uh the fact it has a um a sort of a column shifter but it's a hidden shifter that goes sort of back and forth it's kind of somewhere between like the prius and uh an old you know an old-fashioned you know column shifter but it's hidden and you you have to look behind the steering wheel to see what it's doing and that to me is is is is is not great um figuring out what you should be able to readily see what gear you're in um and also just kind of moving some things around the defrost button i i want to know exactly where that button is and also i want to be able to tell someone else to do it and if it's over by my left knee i can't i can't do it so yeah i think keith you're right uh there are some real frustrations i think something like the gear selector is wonky as it kind of is and kind of hidden i think that's something that as an owner you would get used to i do believe but i think you're you're you're right about like just things like if you want to turn the seat heat if you want to adjust the seat heater or turn it on you press an icon on the screen that is a seat heater button but then that takes you to the climate screen so instead of just pressing you can you should be able to do one press you can already see the seat heater sorry mike i have to i have to correct you on that it's not the climate screen it's the klima screen oh i i yeah it's just c-l-m-i-m-a there's no t-e they left off the t-e there wasn't room i i i think that that saved them 0.000 euros in in the principle thank you thank you for clearing that up uh so i you know that's annoying i i think those it's it takes common tasks that should be you know maybe one just one press or two presses that makes them multiple presses and then just the ridiculousness of uh you don't have dedicate the driver doesn't have dedicated controls for the rear windows uh that's so silly so you have to press this kind of this little uh area on the uh armrest uh where it just says rear so you have to press that but you'll i find like at least half the time i press it and it doesn't change to rear so it doesn't actually uh you press this button and then you can use the controls to do the rear windows but it doesn't always work so why didn't you just give us two more window controls that kind of stuff is so silly and even the home little home chiclet thing isn't why doesn't why doesn't it make it more obvious what the heck it is the blue square there's like this blue square in the screen and i'm thinking what what what is that is it is it is something am i being told what is it telling me do i press it so i think it comes down to this right i mean look tesla is way ahead in terms of technology when it comes to early adopters they're doing things different and they started this nearly a decade ago right i mean we had a 2012 tesla model s and they changed lots of stuff and we gave them lots of kudos for it right i mean there was a whole bunch of things like this is how you make a car and they just changed they changed a lot they changed very simple things like there's no start button on a tesla you know and that works fine change for improvement awesome make things different just because we've always been doing things one way doesn't mean we shouldn't do some things different or because it's flashy or gimmicky it seems like why they do it sometimes right well we gotta make it appear more futuristic so we'll make this screen all wonky uh so it looks kind of neat on the showroom floor i guess well and it's like these lessons learned and maybe they're the wrong lessons you know i mean they used to have an electric golf right and it was like a golf but it was electric and it was like ah nobody wanted that so we're gonna go make this without the gizmos and the electronics and we'll do things differently and maybe they'll like it that change it to make it better don't just make it because it's different yeah i i couldn't agree more we have a question someone sent us a question about the id4 to talking cars at icloud.com it's a real cool technical question so uh shekar from vancouver british columbia asks regarding crs testing of the volkswagen 84 since braking is more efficient at the front axle how much regenerative braking is there at the front and rear axles i assume the all-wheel drive is more stable along with more power than the rear wheel drive version of the vehicle does the all-wheel drive version have torque vectoring or electronic stability control esc at all four wheels or just at the rear it's a this is a really cool question um monty i believe you did some digging on this and reached out to reached out to volkswagen yeah absolutely yeah absolutely i did reach out to volkswagen and uh they were very good about getting back to us and for the first part of the question they said actually uh all regen comes from the rear wheels uh and we do that because a higher load point for one motor is more efficient in almost all situations and then for the second part of the question about the torque vectoring they said the id4 does not have a torque vectoring system like say the golf r where you can freely distribute wheel torque between the rear wheels they said we do use the esc electronic stability control to control wheel slip and help induce a little bit of yaw and what they mean by that uh is they you know meaning to help the car turn a little better or turn a little quicker is what they're talking about so really interesting question really interesting and maybe surprising answer yeah because i think the question really gets to the point i mean anyone who you know i mean if if you put if you just use the rear brakes and you have slick roads and you have icy roads it could be a problem i know obviously we have all types of anti-lack breaks now and all these things that could remedy that but um it is interesting i mean anyone who has a rear wheel drive electric car you know you drive in the ice it would be interesting to see if people had that um had that situation um i mean you know my guess is it is not an issue because of anti-lock brakes right and that the systems will sense if there's any lock up from the rear and then remedy that but um really interesting yeah that's that's a great question so no matter what your question is whether it's what kind of car should i buy or uh does the specific vehicle have torque vectoring uh send it to us well we'll get the answer for you uh that's what we do here at talking cars so thanks for sending your questions for two talking cars at icloud.com and thanks for talking cars with us we'll talk again soon\n"