The rear brake rotors on my Yaris hybrid are basically always rusty because they get used so little. After some time you just know when to start braking so you only use regen instead of the brakes.
They’re enclosed so they don’t get dirty, the inner face of drum will rust less than discs, fade is not an issue thanks to regen braking, and before they get too hot and fade drums will brake harder than disks (thanks to a higher pad surface area). And they’re enclosed so they also keep the brake dust inside the drum, making it easier to dispose of safely.
Drums are heavier tho.
> They should add some “brake cleaning” mode to temporarily disable regenerative braking.
Some manufacturers do that (iirc tesla calls it burninshing, others will switch regen off completely if you switch to neutral or something).
I've read that Audi and Porsche will use regular brakes once or twice at the start of every drive instead of regen, I assume using electronic control to imitate the current state of regen braking.
Also known as breaking. You could just do that once in a while.
Car producers can and do resolve this, e.g. iirc Audis don't use recuperation for the first breaking of the day. That way you don't have to remember to use the no-recuperation/break cleaning mode or break unnecessarily hard every now and then.
(When I say "the manual", I mean both the manual of my previous car which was a hybrid Toyota Auris, and my current car which is a fully electric Volvo XC40.)
* https://www.dictionary.com/e/brake-vs-break/
The two words are:
It's 2025 and hybrids have enough software to automate some non-hybrid braking action.