Friction without wear - what are the requirements? You rub two blocks of wood together, they wear away rapidly. Same with two blocks of steel, but more slowly.
However, vehicle brakes dissipate large amounts of heat for relatively negligible wear. How do they do it?
 A: Friction force simply depends on the magnitude of normal force between two surfaces and the coefficient of friction.
This force acts along the two surfaces (parallel to them), thus creating a shearing force on both the surfaces.
Thus depending on above two factors, a large range of forces can be experienced by the surfaces.
Now, to answer your question, the amount of wear and tear simply depends on the ability of the surface to bear shearing stress. In wood, the molecules are weakly covalent bonded but in metals, the atoms are strongly bounded, thus produce much less wear and tear.
Tyres are designed in a suitable way to ensure that it can bear large amount of shearing stress by using proper materials to ensure least wear and tear.
A: Break pads are designed to be effective most by having high temperature endurance . The friction generated in the brake system is due to huge pressure applied on calipers by the pump, in the order of 1200 psi.  
This force creates a lot of heat which needs to be tolerated by the pads momentarily and be removed by dissipation in the disks and ventilation. The pads must be tough enough to last long but softer than the disk metal not to grind it.
