Basically, the most efficient way to drive any vehicle would be to accelerate to a constant speed and then never touch the brake pedal. It doesn’t make electric vehicles more efficient per se, it just makes them less inefficient. It is important to realize that on its own, regenerative braking isn’t a magical range booster for electric vehicles. Then, the next time the car accelerates, it uses much of the energy previously stored from regenerative braking instead of tapping in further to its own energy reserves. Regenerative braking uses an electric vehicle’s motor as a generator to convert much of the kinetic energy lost when decelerating back into stored energy in the vehicle’s battery. All of that energy was simply lost to the environment.įortunately, we have evolved as a species and developed a better way. Back in the Neanderthal days of internal combustion engine cars, brakes were solely friction based and converted the kinetic energy of the vehicle into wasted heat in order to decelerate a car. Moving vehicles have a lot of kinetic energy, and when brakes are applied to slow a vehicle, all of that kinetic energy has to go somewhere. Join us as we take a deep dive into regenerative braking and its effectiveness in various electric vehicles. But did you know that regenerative braking isn’t only limited to electric cars? These days, you can find it in everything from electric bicycles and skateboards to electric scooters. Ever since the first Toyota Prius rolled off the line over 20 years ago, the concept of regenerative braking has become fairly well-known as a method of increasing range in hybrid and electric vehicles.
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