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Welcome 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 Volkswagen's ID.4.
This is a car that we have some information up about
online at cr.org.
So we've finished putting it through our tests.
How did it do, Monti?
Well, so first of all, yeah.
It's Volkswagen's first dedicated long-range electric
vehicle.
They had the e-Golf and stuff before,
but this is now on a true, dedicated, electric vehicle
platform.
And it's like a cross between a hatchback and an SUV.
And overall, it did pretty well.
I mean, it's not a bad driving vehicle.
It's pretty quick, it's got plenty of room inside,
pretty comfortable.
But it's got some really frustrating controls--
which I'm sure we're going to talk about--
and its driving range--
well, we originally drove a rented rear-wheel drive model
from Volkswagen, which had 201 horsepower.
The one we tested was 295 horsepower
with all-wheel drive.
And this one, the rear-wheel drive was pretty slow.
And we're used to electric vehicles
being really zippy off the line, and that rear-wheel drive one
was not that quick at all.
It was shockingly sluggish.
This one felt much more normal.
It's pretty quick-- 0 to 60 in less than six seconds--
but its driving range is only 240 miles.
And when you think about the Tesla Model
Y-- which is a direct competitor--
is 326 miles, that's a pretty big difference.
It's like it's, in a way, almost sort of behind the times,
even though it's brand new.
But it all depends.
And we can get into this too, all
depends on how you drive your electric vehicle, right?
If you're not taking long trips, it's not going to matter.
If you're just driving it-- if you have 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 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-- it's a little soft through the turns.
It doesn't have that taut, German car-feel
that we're used to.
If you think of Jetta, Golf, Passat--
for years, we've talked about how these cars have
that German, taut feel.
And this doesn't have that.
So this is a little more body roll through corners
than you might imagine for a Volkswagen,
but in return, it's got a pretty comfortable ride.
And then a couple of 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 they have this sort of either dead
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 spongy,
and then it seems like as you're getting close to stop,
now it's stopping more.
So now it's hard to modulate exactly--
it feels like you're always having to adjust your brake
pedal pressure.
Which in most cars and a well-designed brake pedal,
you press on it, and you can gauge, almost as soon as you
start pressing on the brake pedal,
you can keep that consistent pedal pressure all the way
through.
You can't do that with this vehicle.
They missed the boat on that.
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 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 they're
very similar to the ones that are in pretty
much any Volkswagen right now.
I had my own experience with it, but I'll save it
until Jake goes through.
Jake, what do you think here?
Well, I mean, I'm going to bore you,
because I'm going to say the same thing I always say when it
comes to Monti's input, but--
--He's wrong!
As usual.
Monti is completely right on all counts.
I know I say it every time, every episode.
I know I bore you.
But everything-- Mike, exactly.
Everything you said, that's exactly what it is.
And it's a pretty good car, but why?
Why are we having another of this genre?
Why is everyone trying to be another Model Y?
Because you're not going to be a Model
Y. You're not going to be a Model 3,
you're not going to be a Tesla.
Because the Tesla--
I mean, it's sportier, and it's like they've
gone down this list.
Like, OK, well, let's make it like a small size hatchback,
and it's got to be pretty powerful.
But we're not going to get quite the range.
Oh, and controls.
Well, we better make those really different.
It's almost like this is the ingredients that you do.
And I feel like it's a missed opportunity.
I mean, how many years have we been seeing
these concepts of the ID.
Buzz or the electric van?
I mean, they just keep on taunting with us.
I mean, that would have been something new to the party.
I mean, you could imagine a little boxy van
with more room inside?
No, no, we have to do another of the same genre.
And again, it's doing the same good things,
it's making the same mistakes.
You talked about the controls.
And this isn't just an ID.4 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.
Really, really simple controls.
But this is the first of their new control
system, which we saw on the new GTI and some
of these new vehicles.
And it's just, it's the same script.
Let's put capacitive controls, let's make
it harder to find things.
Who would want the temperature up and down
to have an up or a down, or something you see at night?
It's change for change sake, trying to be high-tech
but not making it better, and that's just disappointing.
It's not a bad vehicle.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
But I don't think it really brings a whole lot
new to the party.
Yeah, I mean, especially for the price.
One thing that is cool about it is you
get three years of charging through Electrify America,
which is like that might sway me away from the Tesla
Supercharger network.
But I know where the superchargers are
and 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 think that's also another point in favor of--
Well, it's a point of favor, but it's not something new.
I mean, when Tesla came out, what did they say?
Free charging everywhere.
That was when they got into the game.
Now they're a little bit past that,
but again, it's the script.
It's the same script.
But I think something that really affected
me was that I drove this for the first time back-to-back
with the IONIQ 5.
And the IONIQ 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,
everything is exactly where you expect it to be.
They didn't change anything for change's sake,
to say, 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 IONIQ 5
and the dashboard is this flat panel with carpet on it.
I mean, I love that.
I love the future.
I love the fact that this car is so different.
The ID.4, I get in, and the only things that are different about
it to me, despite the fact it being from-the-ground-up EV,
are the fact that the day I drove it, it was a little wet.
It wasn't cold enough for gloves so I had a 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 got to be--
I'm that guy in the infomercial, there's got to be a better way.
And every automaker in the world had that better way.
The fact-- and this is something that it actually shares with
the IONIQ 5--
the fact it has a sort of a column shifter,
but it's a hidden shifter that goes sort of back and forth.
Yeah.
It's somewhere between the Prius and an old-fashioned column
shifter, but it's hidden.
And you have to look behind the steering wheel
to see what it's doing.
And that, to me, is not great.
Figuring out what-- you should be able to readily see what
gear you're in.
And also just moving some things around.
The defrost button, 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 do it.
Yeah, I think, Keith, you're right.
There are some real frustrations.
I think something like the gear selector
is wonky as it is and kind of hidden.
I think that's something that, as an owner,
you would get used to, I do believe.
Oh, yeah.
But I think you're right about just things
like, 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
should be able to do one press.
You can already see the seat heater.
Sorry, Mike, I have to correct you on that.
It's not the climate screen, it's the clima screen.
Oh.
Yeah, it's just C-L-I-M-A, there's no T-E.
They left off the T-E.
There wasn't room?
I think that saved them 0.00000 euros in the print--
Well, thank you for clearing that up.
So that's annoying.
I think it takes common tasks that should be maybe just one
press or two presses, and makes them multiple presses, and then
just the ridiculousness of, the driver
doesn't have dedicated controls for the rear windows.
That's so silly.
So you have to press this little area on the armrest, where
it just says rear.
So you have to press that.
But I find at least half the time, I press it
and it doesn't change to rear, so it doesn't actually--
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 little home Chiclet thing,
why doesn't it make it more obvious what the heck it is?
The blue square.
Yeah.
There's this blue square in the screen, and I'm thinking,
what is that?
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.
I mean, we had a 2012 Tesla Model S.
And they change 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 changed a lot.
They changed very simple things, like there's
no start button on a Tesla, 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've got to make it appear more futuristic,
so we'll make this screen all wonky,
so it looks neat on the showroom floor, I guess.
Well, and it's like these lessons learned,
and maybe they're the wrong lessons.
I mean, they used to have an electric Golf, right,
and it was like a Golf, but it was electric.
And it was like, nobody wanted that.
So we're going to go make this with all 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 to get it different.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
We have a question.
Someone sent us a question about the ID.4
to TalkingCars@icloud.com.
It's a real cool technical question.
So Shekhar from Vancouver, British Columbia, asks,
regarding Sarah's testing of the Volkswagen ID.4--
"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 really cool question.
Monti, I believe you did some digging on this
and reached out to Volkswagen.
Yeah, absolutely.
I did reach out to Volkswagen and they were very
good about getting back to us.
And for the first part of the question, they said actually,
all regen comes from the rear wheels.
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 ID.4 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 is, meaning
to help the car turn a little better
or turn a little quicker, is what they're talking about.
Really interesting question.
Really interesting, and maybe surprising answer.
Yeah.
Because I think the question really gets to the point.
I mean, if you just use the rear brakes and you have slick roads
and you have icy roads, it could be a problem.
And obviously, we have all types of anti-lock brakes now
and all these things that could remedy that.
But it is interesting.
I mean, anyone who has a rear-wheel drive electric car,
you drive in the ice.
It would be interesting to see if people
that had that situation.
My guess is it is not an issue, because of anti-lock brakes,
and that the systems will sense if there's
any lock up from the rear, and then remedy that.
But really interesting.
Yeah, that's a great question.
So no matter what your question is,
whether it's what kind of car should I buy, or does
this specific vehicle have torque vectoring?
Send it to us.
We'll get the answer for you.
That's what we do here at Talking Cars.
So thanks for sending your questions
to TalkingCars@icloud.com, and thanks
for talking cars with us.
We'll talk again soon.
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