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Hi everyone, Thanks so much for participating in this forum, it has been very helpful for me as a first time hybrid driver. Loving my CMax so far, but a few weeks ago I hit the brakes really hard while sliding on some ice. As of that moment, everything about my brakes felt dramatically different. It was very weird the rest of the drive since I basically had to relearn my braking technique. The brake pedal itself now gives no resistance back to my foot based on how deep or hard I press it. Before this happened, it felt like that was pressing against air-resistance from the pedal with that normal hiss, it felt like every car I have ever driven. Now, none of that exists and the brake pedal feels like it is on a toy car. It still kind of brakes based on how deep I push the pedal down, but if I want a full stop I have to go to the floor, then the pedal springs back up as you'd expect. I can get 100%s still, I just have to control how gradually I brake. This is the only way to brake, though, if I really have to slam on them, it's pretty weak and of course goes right to the floor and you can feel the friction of the brakes. One of the go-to brake solutions would be to pump the brakes, but that is exactly the mechanism that no longer works. There is no more pumping the brakes, nothing pumps, there's no changing pressure, it just springs back, up and down, floor to top. I took it to a mechanic friend and he looked at everything within his knowledge of the system - he took the wheels off and things looked new, brakes engaging perfectly (from his perspective), he tested the booster, did an electrical test. It took him about four hours. It is tough because he had never driven it before, so it was tough for him to process how different it really is, which is very different. If he checked all that, to me that means it must be high up near the pedal itself? Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone have an idea as to the solution?

I've been hearing a metallic grinding noise when braking and it stays for a while after releasing the pedal (the car has 29K miles). The car's been into the dealership twice now, the first time they couldn't hear it and charged me $30 for the trouble. The second time I took one of the engineers out so he could hear it. Once he heard it they took it in for another day of work and 12 miles of road testing. However, after looking at the brakes, the pads and the calipers (all were in perfect shape)they came to the decision that it is all normal due to the regenerative braking. I don't buy it, there shouldn't be a metal grinding noise from a car, let alone when its breaking and after. It's like the calipers don't release fully. Has anyone else experienced the same/similar problem? I'll get a recording and post it to the thread.