Does regenerative braking work? I did a test #regenerative #braking #ev

So what happens is basically, if youre in an electric car, you have this regen regenerative, okay, fine hard to pronounce that so Im going to call it regen breaking okay, so the region breaking and basically, when you are driving a car, you put your foot on the Accelerator, the battery will send power to a motor which will drive the wheels and that drives the arena forward or backwards. Whatever Direction you want to go. If you let off the accelerator, what will happen is the motor starts, turning the opposite direction and when its turning the opposite direction, its trying to harvest energy from the wheels to put it back up into the high voltage battery, which is obviously where the power comes From for the car, fine um, I normally when I get into one of these cars, what I do is I reduce the level of regen braking okay, so we need to go for drive to show you how this works. So you see these paddles here see when the dash over there theyre changing so up and down through the various levels right. So if you look along here, I have no regenerative braking. I can have level one which is some. I can have a medium Mount, which is number two or I can have a lot, which is number three. So all Im doing is just touching those paddles fine. So, as you can imagine, obviously, if I have level one theres, a certain amount of have level two theres, even more regen breaking.

If I have level three theres, even more regen breaking um, I hate the sensation. So what its like, basically is when you let off the pedal, youll feel the camera kind of slow down um but um I dont enjoy it, so I normally conclude, disable it and all the reading and all the people that really know a lot about electric characters Are saying no, that is not the way its dude youre better off using the regen breaking so just to see if its actually more effective. What Im going to do is Im going to drive the car and on Corners youre gon na have a trip menu over here so Im going to go into this second one here and Im going to scroll downwards, so you got something basically called uh Drive information. So its going to tell us, in terms of kilowatts per 100 kilometers over here, itll tell you what our consumption is. So Im going to drive home tonight, go and drive it with it on tonight. Im going to stick it on level three! So Im going to leave it all the way home on level three and then tomorrow, Im going to drive the same Journey again, the opposite direction, uh with it completely off just to see, is there much of a difference in the drive information between having it on Or off with regen braking so say, for example, when youre driving along what I used to find and still do find it let off the pedal, the car slows down very quickly.

You can feel the resistance it is like having a brake pedal on and, I suppose, essentially thats what its doing is trying to harvest energy from the Turning wheels. So its really handy when you come up to a junction, see here on the paddle. If I hold that so I dont even have to use the brake pedal, I can just hold that and actually that will stop the car. I can use that as the brake instead of my foot brake now, because youre not using those hydraulic brakes around your foot. Obviously, you wont use as much brake pads as you normally would so. Its got a really really big Advantage there, but I just always felt like I was constantly fighting the car. So every time we let off the pedal. Yes, its slowing down, it is saving on brake, pads and stuff, but I just felt like I had to floor the car more often than I would on a car that would essentially Freewheel the drive home. I do every evening has a Motorway its got. Some 100 kilometer an hour, its got some back road, slow, driving its got some Town driving its actually very, very varied. So itll give you a really good. You know average kind of usage of how much electricity an electric car uses. Okay, so that journey is finished. Uh, so that was regen on 74 kilometer Journey 13.5 kilowatt hour consumption just over an hour of a journey, so I reckon yeah that actually looks better than what Id normally get okay.

The return trip so were going to undo that level of regen, but this way normally drive like theres, literally no region. So in my period of mind, Im thinking right, I dont have to fight the the kind of slowing up I can just free will. I take my foot off the pedal and you can see here. Momentum continues to carry me Im, not putting my foot on the pedal in my head in a normal Convention of fuel car. This would be an efficient way to drive, so it is the complete opposite of what regenerative braking is Im, trying to Freewheel as much as possible for anyone, thats unfamiliar with the measurement Im using so where, if we look at the car when we drove it last Night, it told me that every 100 kilometers on average wed be consuming 13.5 kilowatts of electricity, in other words thats kilowatts per 100 kilometers. Similarly, in a conventionally fueled, petrol or diesel, car youll get something of liters per 100 kilometers, so thats, in other words, how many liters of fuel youre using every hundred kilometers the end of this journey. So what we got uh uh similar again but 73 kilometers covered a little over an hour of a journey 15.4 kilowatt hours. So the reminders have last nights Journey last nights Journey even uh. It was 13.5, usually um. So technically, yes, it actually has made a difference. So in a percentage kind of term, uh youre – probably talking about whats – that about 12 or 13 of a difference, and I had that on the max region.

So I guess, like you, do have to modify your driving style to use that regen braking because, as I said, I feel like Im fighting the car when its always there I feel, like I have to use the accelerator pedal more and put these manufacturers know what Theyre talking about so they wouldnt have it there if it wasnt beneficial and, I suppose, Im after doing the journey, and it does make a difference so um in terms of like uh electricity saving or whatever yep um Id like to be able to save oops. To be able to save 10 or over 10, like it is a significant amount um anyway. Hopefully, that is useful for anyone thats curious about regenerative, braking its something I never did before and its something I didnt drive with regen breaking enough and probably going forward a better start anyway.