Regen can provide a substantial amount of energy back into the battery pack. On my Volt, the dashboard displays the kW for both discharge and regen charging. Regen can reach about 60 kW. The Volt battery is about 360 volts, so the regen current would be around 167 amps.
A year ago I drove the Volt up Mt Washington in New Hampshire. From the base of the mountain, the road is 7.5 miles of driving up. The car was put in 'mountain mode', which appears to leave some miles in reserve. For the 7.5 mile drive up, the battery started with about 43 miles of range available. The climb up is an average of a 12 % grade, so used up most of the pack in about 5 miles. It switched on the gas motor at that point, with about 10 miles remaining on the pack. At the top, the battery was still showing about 10 miles of range available. On the way down, regen was amazing. Miles of range added very quickly to the pack. You have to brake almost continuously all the way down. When we reached the bottom of the mountain, 7.5 miles later, regen had charged the pack up to a 59 miles of range! Those were truely available miles on the battery as I made the 70 mile drive home almost all the way on battery. Chevy advertises the Volt as having a 38 mile electric range. In the summer months, I usually get in the high 40s, and have reached 50 miles a few times after completing charge at home. I don't know how much of those extra miles can be attributed to regen, but I suspect that regen contributes to a lot of it. The Volt uses the middle of the pack to help with longevity. It is a 16+ kWh pack but only uses about 10 kWh when going from "full" battery to "empty". This leaves some room at the top and bottom of the pack, and it sure seems like it used that normally-unused top of the pack on the ride down the mountain. So in my opinion, regen really works great. Wayne Krauth -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/Re-EVLN-What-Click-n-Clack-know-about-regen-tp4672248p4672270.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
