New car with less tech

[odyssey06]

A hybrid using regenerative braking is cheaper to run in cities because for much of the time you are not using any petrol, as the braking recharges the battery instead to power the vehicle. But little benefit if doing mainly non-stop motorway or rural driving.

 

[TomEdison]

A hybrid using regenerative braking is cheaper to run in cities because for much of the time you are not using any petrol, as the braking recharges the battery instead to power the vehicle. But little benefit if doing mainly non-stop motorway or rural driving.

All the energy recaptured by the regenerative braking is originally produced by the engine. Non-regenerative brakes simply dissipate energy; regenerative brakes recapture some of that energy and store it in the battery where it can be drawn on; they make braking less wasteful of energy. But they only recapture some of the ; this process is not 100% efficient. So there is still some waste. And the more braking you do, the more waste there will be, even with regenerative brakes.

So:

• Braking using regenerative brakes is more efficient than braking using conventional brakes; you waste less of the kinetic energy of the car.
• But it is not more efficient than not braking, which wastes none of the car's kinetic energy.

Thus, regenerative brakes ornot, mainly non-stop motorway or rural driving will always be more energy-efficient than stop-start urban driving. Even in an EV with regenerative brakes, stop-start driving will not be cheaper; it will be more expensive. But it will not be as much more expensive as it would be without the regenerative brakes.