I'm sure this topic has come up before but I couldn't find it with the search engine.

Has anyone surveyed how often brake pads need to be replaced on the FEH? Intuition says that it is less than conventional cars due to the regen-braking, but how much?

Hypermilers have a technique they call "Driving Without Brakes" (DWB). The way I drive here in warm FL, I don't think my pads will ever wear out. Ford says the rear pads will wear twice as fast as the front in their workshop manual because of regen. My problem is rust of the rotor faces. After 41,000 miles, my front brake pads and rotors still look new and there is no pad dust on any of 4 rims to speak of since I learn of the LGA (low gear advantage) I posted about long ago.

GaryG

Considering how long, or number of drives it takes for all the rust to come off the rotors after I wash mine, I can tell these pads will be lasting longer than the typical car.

2008 Ford Escape Hybrid - Adopted 7-7-07

Unless you are NOT driving your hybrid remotely correctly the brakes will probably last 100,000 miles. Squiky brakes from low use will be the most common issue. I periodically(once or twice a month) drive to about 50 miles per hour PUT IT IN NEUTRAL and brake aggressivily down to stop. This will clean the rust off the rotors.

Here is a list of things you will NOT have to do to maintain your FEH/MMH

Replace
Alternator
Starter
Transmission filter

Ducit Amour Hybridae
Mark Smith
Master Certifited Technician
Tempus non reparabilis fugit
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

Best Tank 35.0 MPG

While Ford "expects" the rear to wear faster than the front, all 4 of my pads have the same thickness at 50,000 miles. I am very gentle with them, and do a lot of highway miles. Regen brake does ~90% of my stopping around town.

These pads will last well over 100,000 miles, maybe, the lifetime of the car. ( 250,000 mi ) We should try to find how those FEH taxis did on brake pads. I heard the battery lasted 233,000 to 250,000 miles )

In a meeting with Mary Ann Wright, former directer of Hybrid technologies at Ford, she said to a large group of people that some owners ( IE Gary and Myself ) will never need to change the brake pads.

This is not true for everyone one, of course!

That would be interesting....but from the report from the SF taxi driver....several drivers rotate through all the taxis and the typical taxi driving technique is "binary" gas-brake-gas-brake.....with no regard for hybrid(regen) capabilities.

Here (attached) was the Ford engineering prediction on the brakes as the first FEH's came out....

Attached Images

brake system description.pdf (7.9 KB, 25 views)

My understanding of that PDF is that Ford expects the rear pads to wear at the same rate as a normal vehicle would. If that's the case, then they should last the lifetime of the car since most cars don't user a lot of rear brake to begin with.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I also think the cabs would be a good measure of the FEH's worst case scenario of brake wear (among other parts).