Noisy brakes

How long have you had it, how many miles? Disc brakes are prone to rust when the car's been idle for a protracted time.

Give it a few weeks and more use, and monitor it: the rust may clear up with use. Shine a light through the spokes and see how the discs look now, front and rear. Maybe take a pic and post too.

 

This is a characteristic quirk of all Prius models going back to the first one, and I learned about it years ago right here on PriusChat.

Because the car makes so little use of the friction brakes, the rotors will get surface-rusted at the slightest provocation, like just sitting overnight in damp weather, and in the morning you'll have that ugly scraping sound, because the car doesn't normally use the brakes hard enough to scrape the rust off, only hard enough to lightly rub the pads on it and sound awful.

Solution: this will become second nature, you'll be doing it every morning after a damp night, or any other time you've noticed the noise.

Pull away onto the street; drive normally; make your first couple of stops in Neutral. That disables the regenerative braking and forces the car to use the friction brakes like a normal car. After a couple normal stops in Neutral from ordinary neighborhood driving speeds, you'll notice the brakes are all quiet and smooth again.

Don't bother replacing the rotors (unless they have some other problem that merits it, like deep scoring). You'll only be frustrated the next morning after a damp night when the new ones sound bad again. Just smile and make a couple stops in Neutral. Works like magic.

There was post on here where an unscrupulous dealer actually sold the same customer multiple $xxx brake jobs, every time the customer came in saying they sound bad again, instead of ever explaining this.

-Chap