All newer cars do this. It’s called regenerative braking.
Comment on Why don't electric car manufacurers put solar panels on the car roofs?
TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 months agoYou seem to know what you’re talking about and I want to piggyback off this question to ask why they don’t harvest energy from the brakes or the wheels spinning. I always heard braking once could power a home for a day or something. And I assume if you put a passive spinning wheel power generator on each of the four wheels, you’d also produce a lot of energy. Are all of these things too heavy to have any benefit? Plus the wind passing the car as it drives…it just feels like there are a lot of missed opportunities for new energy production as the car moves that aren’t taken advantage of. What’s holding these ideas back?
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 4 months ago
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Most electric cars have regenerative braking. It’s not magic though, it takes more energy to speed the car back up than it recovers. Regenerative braking just makes stopping less bad for range. Sure you can go down a mountain and gain a lot of power, but not enough to go back up the mountain.
joostjakob@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Electric cars do charge when braking. Obviously the energy recuperated is less then waht was needed to drive that fast in the first place. Using driving wind would just increase the energy needed to drive that speed and would be net negative.