Whenever you convert one form of energy to another, you always have losses. It's the laws of Physics.
If you convert electric energy stored in the battery pack to mechanical motion (driving a motor), you lose some energy doing that. You can get as high as 90% efficiency, you you still lose something due to resistance in the wires, contacts, the inverter, tire friction against the road, etc.
Regenerative braking works by turning the motors into generators. It puts energy back into the battery, but never as much as you put in. If you try to run systems by putting a generator on the powertrain to run auxiliary systems, that's just an additional load and you lose energy turning the mechanical energy back into electricity. It's far more efficient to take the electricity straight from the battery pack and keep it as electricity to power the systems.
There is a saying "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." TANSTAAFL I think it was something Heinlein characters were always saying in some of his books. In Physics, it's always true for energy transfer.
All forms of energy generation are converting some kind of energy into something else. Solar converts the energy from the giant fusion reactor in the sky into electricity. Wind and hydro power harness the power in natural forces in our environment to generate power (wind moving air and hydro from water falling downhill or from the tides). Nuclear harnesses the energy released when atoms decompose and fossil fuel plants harness the energy released when ancient plant and animal energy is released through burning.
Any system that tries to feed back on itself will fail because of the losses in converting one energy form to another. Energy from nature seems free because we only tap a small amount of the actual energy there and the raw material is generally free, we're spending the money to convert the energy. But we are actually taking some energy out to convert it.
If you convert electric energy stored in the battery pack to mechanical motion (driving a motor), you lose some energy doing that. You can get as high as 90% efficiency, you you still lose something due to resistance in the wires, contacts, the inverter, tire friction against the road, etc.
Regenerative braking works by turning the motors into generators. It puts energy back into the battery, but never as much as you put in. If you try to run systems by putting a generator on the powertrain to run auxiliary systems, that's just an additional load and you lose energy turning the mechanical energy back into electricity. It's far more efficient to take the electricity straight from the battery pack and keep it as electricity to power the systems.
There is a saying "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." TANSTAAFL I think it was something Heinlein characters were always saying in some of his books. In Physics, it's always true for energy transfer.
All forms of energy generation are converting some kind of energy into something else. Solar converts the energy from the giant fusion reactor in the sky into electricity. Wind and hydro power harness the power in natural forces in our environment to generate power (wind moving air and hydro from water falling downhill or from the tides). Nuclear harnesses the energy released when atoms decompose and fossil fuel plants harness the energy released when ancient plant and animal energy is released through burning.
Any system that tries to feed back on itself will fail because of the losses in converting one energy form to another. Energy from nature seems free because we only tap a small amount of the actual energy there and the raw material is generally free, we're spending the money to convert the energy. But we are actually taking some energy out to convert it.
