ROTORA Circuit Braker

"Upgrade the brakes"? Why? They hardly get used.

 

Leave a longer following distance to the car ahead, then you won't
have this problem.
.
_H*

 

What type of tires do you have? The brakes on the Prius work pretty well, but the OEM tires are not that good.

Tom

 

I thought my brakes were fine, up until I needed them in an urgent way. It seems that in a hard braking, I had a slight 1/2 to 1 second pause of neither regen nor mechanical braking. Sort of like the brakes just let go between regen and mech. Fortunately it didn't happen at the wrong moment, as I had plenty of time to actually slow down. But I see where someone could come up short (translation: freak out) in an emergency. I accepted this glitch as part of the tradeoff of regen, and I've made allowance for just a little more cushion since. I personally don't believe that "better" mechanical brakes would have any effect whatsoever, since the dead space is between the regen and mech. Maybe somewhere there's a thread on this issue?

 

If you slam on the brakes as in an emergency there is no pause. The car goes directly to hydraulic brakes, bypassing regen completely. If you plan on testing this, be careful. The Prius brakes DO stop very hard. Make sure you have nothing loose in the car, and nobody is following you too closely!

Now you CAN get a disconcerting "loss of braking" if you hit a rough bump during braking. I'm not convinced this is caused by a tire leaving the road surface. It seems to me it happens too easily for that explanation. I'm wondering if the anti-lock hardware is sensitive to shock.

 

i bet in order to upgrade the brakes you would have to remove the entire braking system. the braking system in the prius is not like any other braking system.

the majority of brake fluid goes to a dead end, and its soul purpose in life is just to give the driver the feel of a hydraulic brake pedal.

when you press the brake pedal, a signal is sent to the brake ECU and using two springs, it decides on whether or not to actually use the mechanical brake, or use the regenerative brake.

in order to upgrade the prius "fake brake" i bet you would have to get better brake pads and then trip the failsafe on the braking ECU to get it to use mechanical brakes 100% of the time

or you could trade your car in

maybe get another car or a touring edition, the touring edition is reported to as stopping 10' shorter then the base prius, and it has the same braking system as the base prius, curious isn't it

 

As others have mentioned, the stock brakes are just fine for emergency stops and can activate ABS without fail on clean dry concrete.

If you need to stop faster, you need stickier tires. The stock tires don't have the most traction as they are biased a bit towards low rolling resistance for fuel economy. Since you live in LA, go shop for some summer tires or other all-season high performance tires to get some snow capability for the off chance you drive to the mountains.

You can even spend more money on larger wheels (16 or 17") and wider tires which should stop even better, but you will incur a larger fuel economy hit. Just make sure you get the lightest wheels you can afford.