Long before brands like Porsche, Mercedes / AMG and Cadillac made it trendy to dress up your disc brake parts so they’d display like jewelry from behind the car’s spinning wheels, drum brakes were the norm. Back then, nobody loved drum brakes enough to dress them up for display with a splash of shiny metal and color, and past history meant that cars with four-wheel drum brakes were not known to stop very well or, be very safe.
Didn’t read the whole article but I imagine this is a cost savings thing since they’re cheap to produce but don’t work as well as disk and are harder to service and maintain. Manufacturers are probably spinning this to make them seem like a wonderful new idea but I’m sure it’s about cost above all else.
The article tries to sell it twice that they are easier to service. Anyone who has ever serviced them knows that is a lie.
Especially with newer cars where you just pull a couple clips and you can swap pads without even removing the caliper. I do brake jobs for a lot of family members, and this was a pleasant surprise to find.