Electric motors and generators are about 30% effective. 30% of 30% is about 10%, so regenerative breaking gets back is about 10% max! That is better than a kick in the pants*, but not much. RB is mostly a feature that cost little to implement and sounds good in the advertising.
*RB seems to be mostly useful for controlling speed on long downhills. -- graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" ----------------------------------- Cory Papenfuss wrote: >> highway mileage with good all-round performance. The Hybrid will do >> better in the city though, partially due to regenerative braking. The >> Prius gets notably better city mileage than it does on the highway. >> >> -Adam > > If you drove on the highway at city speeds, you'd get even better > mileage. Regen braking throws a lot of energy away at anything but low > braking power levels... especially on an electric vehicle with a battery > pack as minimal as the prius. The research hybrid electric car I worked > on for my M.S. had a similarly sized pack (20 miles). At the 1C rate > (probably about 2-3kW for the Prius), the batteries only retained about > 50% of what you tried to stuff in them. On acceleration (at the 1C rate > again), you throw away another 50%. Regen is not the panacea everyone > thinks it is unless you can keep the rates really low... MUCH lower than > people are used to hitting the brakes. The other way to make it "lower" > is to put a bigger pack in it so the same current is "less" to the > battery. They spell these types of hybrids E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C. > > Batteries suck. > > -Cory > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
