If anybody wonders if the hybrid power-regeneration process actually works, here’s some proof.
When you hit the brakes, my Prius turns the electric motor into a generator, and returns the generated power to the battery. As you increase the pedal pressure, it simply increases the field voltage in the now-generator, thus generating more electricity and concomitantly creating more drag. Only if you absolutely jam the brakes on, or reach a relatively low speed (say, about 10 MPH), will it actually engage the hydraulic brakes to stop the car.
Therefore, it should be that your normal braking system is relatively lightly used, especially if you are a relatively careful driver, and the wear on your brake pads should be low.
Having now almost 110,000 miles on my original pads, I went in a week ago to have a brake shop check them out, since I last looked at them about 40,000 miles ago, I figured that they must be almost shot by now. Well, to my surprise, and very much so to that of the brake shop, they found I had by wear-depth almost 50% of my pad life left. So, somewhere around 220,000 miles, I should start thinking about replacing my brakes — for the first time.
Now you’re saying, so what? Brakes are cheap, replacing them is not such a big deal, why do you care? Well, it’s just an index of how much power is really generated over the course of 100,000 miles — power that’s put right back in the battery to use in getting up to speed again, power that is in a normal car just lost as heat. Not such a big deal, but multiply that by 200,000,000 cars and you have the potential for a bunch of savings.
Perhaps that’s one of the keys to all this new focus on conservation: each one of us does a little, but it adds up. Raising the CAFE mileage standards by two MPG doesn’t sound like much, until you multiply it by all the nation’s cars, and then you have ship after ship after ship not coming to our shores with crude oil.
