Somebody I know has recently purchased a PHEV.
Now he hasn't actually had it that long and it already has some 8000 miles on it, so it gets plenty of use.
However, despite this, the disks are already showing signs of quite noticeable surface pitting and corrosion.
To my mind, they simply are not getting enough actual use to keep them clean since the car uses regenerative braking most of the time and only uses the disks/pads when braking hard.
The problem here, and I have seen this many times over the years on cars that only get light use, sooner or later he is going to get those bands of heavy corrosion creeping in from the edges of the sweaped surface until the disks and pads are going to need to be replaced not because of wear but simply because of unacceptable levels of corrosion.
Now, in this case, the vehicle in question is an Audi Q8. A new set of disks/pads all round is probabally going to cost as much as a small car!
But even on less expensive models I am wondering whether this is going to become a routine issue in the future on EV's and hybrids that are designed to use regenerative braking for anything other than emergency stops.
It would be a bit daft if the fuel savings made on one side of the balance were eaten up by higher servicing costs on the other...! :/
Now he hasn't actually had it that long and it already has some 8000 miles on it, so it gets plenty of use.
However, despite this, the disks are already showing signs of quite noticeable surface pitting and corrosion.
To my mind, they simply are not getting enough actual use to keep them clean since the car uses regenerative braking most of the time and only uses the disks/pads when braking hard.
The problem here, and I have seen this many times over the years on cars that only get light use, sooner or later he is going to get those bands of heavy corrosion creeping in from the edges of the sweaped surface until the disks and pads are going to need to be replaced not because of wear but simply because of unacceptable levels of corrosion.
Now, in this case, the vehicle in question is an Audi Q8. A new set of disks/pads all round is probabally going to cost as much as a small car!
But even on less expensive models I am wondering whether this is going to become a routine issue in the future on EV's and hybrids that are designed to use regenerative braking for anything other than emergency stops.
It would be a bit daft if the fuel savings made on one side of the balance were eaten up by higher servicing costs on the other...! :/