The Lexus Hybrids are now suspect of having bad brakes. Hope this nightmare ends soon. 450H owners keep us up to date.

 

I prevously had a 400h, and at times the brakes would exhibit a "let-off" when being applied. This was not unheard of and was mentioned in various forums as being a function of the regenerative braking system and one of the negatives when purchasing a hybrid. Niether I nor anyone else that I'm aware of liked the feeling, but were advised simply to ensure sufficient stopping distance (to get best fuel economy you should try to anticipate stops and brake slowly to get the best battery regeneration anyway). It may have already happened in my 450h but I wouldn't have really noticed it since I'm used to it.

We also have a 2010 Prius which will be part of the recall. I have never been clear as to whether all the commotion is due to a particularly bad problem with the prius (which I haven't noticed) or whether it is simply due to a lot of new buyers purchasing hybrids for the first time, not being aware of their idiosynchrosies, and panicking. I'd be curious to know the answer.

 

Having owned a 2007 Camry Hybrid, 2008 Highlander Hybrid and 2010 Prius, I can tell you that the Prius was the only one to exhibit the behavior. Every time I'd apply the brakes going over a set of railroad tracks I could duplicate the feeling of a momentary acceleration. I never experienced that in the other two hybrids.

 

I checked the Lexus website this morning, still no issues with the RX450h. Only the HS250h is affected at this time.

 

would our government (or lack thereof) go negative on Toyota and Honda to further GM and Chrysler??

 

iewiew, maybe you should pose this question in the Car Chat forum. I'm sure it would be a lively topic based on the other threads. Also, you might want to take a look at this article from the New York Times from last Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/we...feeling&st=cse

Back to topic, still no safety recall or service campaign on the RX450h.

 

I was in the snow the whole Wednesday, the breaks felt solid compare to the 1st gen RXh which no longer owned.

 

Brakes are solid for me too. As mentioned, I do receive the let off feeling on the RX every now and then, but this usually only happens when my hybrid battery is near full charge on the gauge. Think Toyota needs to tweak how hard the mechanical brakes need to be applied when the regenerative work is lessened or shut off.

In the big snow storm we had, I intentionally got on the brakes harder than normal to get the ABS to kick in. And there was a time gap where you can feel the transition where the generators where shut off and the abs kicked in. The butt meter would estimate this at <1s. Probably in the order of 100-200 milliseconds at worst case.