Brembo braking

Electric cars break brakes by not using them

A conventional car cleans its own rotors. Every stop scrubs the friction surface, so rust that forms overnight is gone within a mile. An electric vehicle recovers most of its braking energy through the motor and may go weeks without meaningfully touching the pads. The rotors sit still and corrode.

Corroded rotors do not simply look bad. Rust pits the friction surface, the pad then wears unevenly against it, and the driver gets a pulsing pedal on the one occasion they need to brake hard — the emergency the friction system exists for.

Brembo's Beyond line answers this with heavy corrosion-resistant coating on the whole rotor rather than just the hat, and pad compounds formulated for a system used rarely and then severely. The rest of what we hold from Brembo is its conventional performance range, pads and rotors matched as a kit.

Brembo was founded in Bergamo in 1961 and engineers its road ranges at Curno in Lombardy, alongside the racing division that has supplied Formula One grids for decades. Beyond is the name given specifically to the electric-vehicle range, and it is sold as an environmental product as much as a mechanical one: less friction material shed as particulate over the life of the car.