Brake disk size and pads
 

Are the brake disk size and pads the same between the ES350 and the ES300h? I am just wondering because they must be sized for emergency stops and for that regenerative braking must be ignored. Since the cars weigh the same they must be the brakes must be the same. In that case the ES300h brakes can be expected to last longer?

Not sure of the rotor and pad sizes but the brakes on a hybrid can last 60,000 to 100,000 miles or more. :)

Pads and rotors are identical in part numbers for each model.
Source - mylparts.com

So with regenerative braking, the same rotors and pads that used on the ES350 should definitely last much longer on the hybrid as jollick said. Nice :).

Fantastic!
Thank you!

Yes.

If you brake gently, or even moderately, the brakes will very likely last the life of the car. If you brake like a NASCAR driver, you probably wouldn't buy a hybrid in the first place.

My previous car was a hybrid Camry, which had smaller brakes than the non-hybrid Camry, but even those little brakes went the life of the car with no trouble. There are numerous reports of Toyota hybrids in "taxi" service, running for 500,000 miles or more on a set of brakes...

500k miles on one set of pads? Those would've turned to rust by then ;)

I'm not too fond of hybrid brake response though. The ESh doesn't do a lot of regen on coasting and braking reverses the traction motor's rotation to slow down. That's the opposite of Tesla who use a lot of regen on coasting and only use friction brakes for slowing down. I've found that I need to apply extra force on hard stops - the pedal feels like it's already hard and at bottom but I need to press it even harder to come to a stop. Gets pretty hairy when I need to really slow down in the fast lane.

Fortunately for the brakes I drive like a grandma. Brakes on my non hybrid cars last 80'000 miles so I expect these to last the life of the car:)

Okay grandma, we don't expect to hear about brakes from you again. :p

When the car in front of you stops from 70mph, and has no brake lights, it gets pretty hairy in any case. I suppose the skill is to avoid those situations. A little extra following distance can be useful.

I have noticed that, when I stomp on the brakes hard, the mechanical brakes do engage *almost* immediately (with the electric motors, and the ABS, and the VSC system). I suppose an extra few milliseconds, so the system can figure out how hard I am touching the brakes, is the price of the efficiency. The few milliseconds is far less than my own reaction time, in any case.

Grandma does the brake job not because the pads wear out, but because the calipers freeze up!

So move grandma out of Ohio to sunny Calif or FL, or have her flush the brake fluid more than every 500k, lol.