The Science Behind Electric Motors and Regenerative Braking

Traditional cars with regular brakes work by using friction to slow down the vehicle, but this process creates heat that is essentially wasted energy. However, electric motors, on the other hand, can capture this energy and convert it into electricity.

When you step on the brake pedal in a traditional car, it squeezes the caliper, which then presses against the rotor attached to your wheel. This action creates friction, resulting in heat being generated. However, in an electric motor, this process is different. The motor uses the energy of your car's movement to generate electricity, rather than converting it into heat.

In a traditional car, when you're driving and accelerating, the wheels are spinning rapidly and creating torque. This torque is then transmitted through the drivetrain to the electric motor, which converts it into electricity. However, when you lift off the accelerator or coast, the wheels continue to spin due to inertia. As they do so, they create a force that pushes back against the electric motor, causing it to spin in reverse.

This phenomenon is known as regenerative braking, and it's an essential part of how electric vehicles (EVs) work. The electric motor acts as both a generator and a motor, capturing some of the kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost as heat. This energy is then converted back into electricity and stored in the battery.

Modern hybrid cars and EVs use advanced technology to maximize regenerative braking. These systems can adjust the amount of regeneration based on various factors, such as speed, throttle position, and vehicle load. Some modern cars even offer driver-selectable modes that allow the driver to choose between different levels of regenerative braking.

One common feature in hybrid and EV cars is a "one-pedal driving" mode. This mode allows the driver to coast or slow down by taking their foot off the accelerator pedal, rather than pressing the brake pedal. The car will automatically adjust its speed to match the surrounding traffic conditions, using regenerative braking to capture as much energy as possible.

The technology behind regenerative braking is quite complex, involving sophisticated electronics and software that can optimize the process in real-time. However, at its core, it's a simple concept: an electric motor uses the kinetic energy generated by the wheels to create electricity, which is then stored in the battery for later use.

In some modern cars, the regenerative braking system can be turned off completely, allowing the driver to experience the sensation of driving with just one pedal. This mode is particularly useful for city driving or in situations where you need to stop quickly but don't want to engage the brake pedal.

Overall, regenerative braking is a critical component of how electric motors work. By capturing energy that would otherwise be lost as heat, EVs can increase their efficiency and range, making them more environmentally friendly and cost-effective than traditional gasoline-powered cars.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm ryan pezelkowski and i'm mike monticello and again i'm john nice to meet you thank you you guys look different you guys look different than on camera yeah you know real life like that you know bad beard yeah so as you could tell we are back in the studio we're back baby yes 18 plus months later um wow we're sitting next to each other this will be in flux and new some episodes might be here with three people some might be some kind of hybrid maybe one person will be like a a computer screen here you know we'll talk to the to max headroom of auto test but we're making it a go with it so enough of that we're happy we're back we're about to dive in sure all right let's get to it so this week first car that we're gonna talk about the car we're going to talk about the ford maverick hybrid everyone's been asking about this this has been the the trucklet the the car based truck the affordable vehicle that that that people have been asking for no more f-150s right no more giant trucks it's all about small car based i don't want that all right all right for some people the the the interesting thing is that this is the entry-level truck for the maverick line um but even though it starts at 1995 our truck is a little more we bought the lariat version um we were lucky to even get one so we that's how that's how we ended up with illeria i think was like we just grabbed what we could at that point because they were they were so far out right right right yeah so it's a trim higher than what we got for you know we had an xl we have an xlt for the turbo right um maverick and this one's uh the lariat so it's a little bit nicer right yeah so now is one of the things we talked about with the the regular uh the xlt kind of iffy as far as the the materials and such right um so this one only the hybrid only comes front wheel drive powered by 191 horsepower 2.5 liter four-cylinder engine hybrid and hybrid power power chain with a continuously variable transmission um epa rates it at 37 miles per gallon combined you're not seeing that and even diesel pickup trucks no um but anyway while it starts at 1995 um arlaria came out at 25 860 for that trim and total with options big 32 925 including the 1 495 destination fee monty that's the bane of your existence having written that story on it yeah way too expensive that's a lot of money it's amazing how fast you go from a base price to 10 15 over that right it's like it's insane right you know uh what bothers me about that uh destination charge and not to harp on the destination go ahead go ahead when you talk to the automakers they say well it's because people are buying so many big suvs and pickups well okay this might be a pickup right but it's a tiny pickup so why is it still the same high price that they're charging you know for pickup so it's really kind of tells you that the destination charge is a little um um you know maybe gaining a little extra cash there without uh having to put it into the base price right fattening the wall yeah and it's not always clear like i mean we'll get to the car but it's not even clear about what include i've had people ask me about the dealer said they're charging me for fuel because gas is so expensive like that's supposed to be in the destination charge and anyway so anyway um but the big thing about this fuel economy and trucks it's and it's all about the hybrid powertrain um ryan tell us tell us a little bit about your experience with it because i mean you're both truck guys i haven't driven it you guys are going to tell me about it but it has some pros and cons yeah so i i mean to be quite honest i'm embarrassed to admit this when i first got in it i didn't realize it was only front-wheel drive i did not know that and then he floored it front tires no well i did i was actually um in my back lot and i was it was like a hit there's a hill there some dirt and i actually since sensed you know the front wheel spun and i was done like oh this is only front wheel drive and then further research you can only get it that way i didn't realize that but um to me that's a huge hindrance here aside from that it's fantastic i mean i think it's a better it's a nicer driving version than the um the 2.5 all-wheel drive version we have and the xlt yeah the turbo it's a two liter turbo two liter turbo yeah i'm wrong again that's okay unbelievable but it's got all-wheel drive yeah so it's got all-wheel drive right but um just and i bring up that front-wheel drive thing because i tow stuff you know you put stuff in the bed up by a little hill you're spinning tires you even if you had a little boat i mean it tows i think it tows 2 000 pounds if you even if you wanted to tow a little boat up around here our boat ramps are slimy and gross you're not going to get out you're going to i think you're going to be struggling and that's a virtue of a truck that has four wheel or all-wheel drive right so that's a big uh big thing to me but as far as driving it as a regular car and having a bed for maybe like a more urban area where you're you know you're not maybe going off-road or doing that stuff it's fantastic i mean it does a good job at that you know so it's a it's a big caveat to not have that all-wheel drive but fixes some of the issues we had with the with the 2-liter turbo right which is because that has a regular transmission regular automatic transmission this has a continuously variable transmission one of the things we noticed was that maverick wants to get into as tall of a gear as possible for fuel economy uh and then it ends up in this 1300 to 1500 rpm zone where it feels like the engine is lugging and there's this vibration coming into the cabin and then so you either have to hit the gas pedal a little harder to get it to downshift or eventually it figures it out and does it on its own well this this one has none of that right so uh but so it cures that part of it and i will say i thought so i was a little different i knew that it was front-wheel drive only but i also thought 191 horsepower the base base powertrain this is going to be kind of a dog and and honestly i don't know why dog is a is a derogatory thing but anyway it's like a sleepy kid yeah let's call it honestly it's like a lazy dog yeah so but it's actually feels pretty good i mean it's got decent you know decent enough passing power it's not like you feel like it has way less power than the the turbo maverick so i was impressed with that but but you still have a continuously variable transmission right and so this has the downsides of the continuously variable transmission cvts that we've been talking about for a long time which is uh most of the time it does a great job keeping the rpms really low and none of this lugging stuff none of this vibration stuff but when you need to you know really say pass somebody accelerate onto the freeway or when you're just going up say a long grade it's going to have those moments where the revs are being held really high engine flares engine flares uh and it you know gives this sort of droning sensation and it it where the acceleration when you're accelerating the rpms are higher than seem discordant with your actual you know the revs are higher than what it seems like you're accelerating yeah so it still has those cbt foibles we we've this is not one of the best cbts out there where it has the simulated shifts this doesn't do that and also it it has a different rear suspension these these ones come with a you know twist beam non-independent rear suspension and what it's like it's a like a solid beam right instead of being independent so what i noticed was a combination of 18-inch wheels and tires on this one instead of which is because of the lariat trim okay versus 17s on our turbo maverick which is the xlt and the non-independent rear suspension one of the things we really liked about the maverick was it's pretty civilized it has a pretty civilized ride this one you feel it feels a lot more like a regular pickup from that perspective so you lose that as it's not as comfortable of a ride i think still handles almost the same yeah it'll be interesting if is this like a regular pickup a regular pickup um a truck-based one or you know uh body-on-frame where the bed makes a big difference if you're carrying something you know is it gonna settle the ride versus that that other one you know i wanna touch on two thousand pound towing capacity for this 4000 is the max for the turbo engine right i i i have a hard time with people like oh these are great dump cars i mean a 32 000 vehicle dollar vehicle even if it was a 25 000 vehicle to use as a dump run vehicle yeah you know i mean it has its sole purpose as this you know it's it's it's like well what do you what do you how much money do you have in making these grand assumptions that these are perfect for going to the train and going to the dump and that's what you're using your vehicle for but is is does it mean that pickups could be the new suv could could small pickups like this replace suvs or they're still too limited with the bed yeah i mean people have already done that with the full size i mean our f-150s or any other trucks that we've tested you know in their big four doors like yeah the back seat is enormous the new tundra tons of room um and that makes to me perfect sense it's you know and it tows a lot it's more of a multi-purpose it's a pain in the neck in town it is this is awesome with the visibility and right ability to park so yeah i mean it's it's it's it comes down to your needs i suppose i mean i i would never i mean that doesn't suit me but sure um you know while i had it i went i brought some stuff to the dump i you know it was good to just throw stuff in the bed but um if you need just like to your point if you need just a dump run you're better off buying a junk old little truck and leaving it in your yard and you're registering it on a minimum you know insurance and just use it when you need to if that's you know you've got other cars to do the other things but i think that you know it's say this is that time of the year where you go and you know to uh you know the hardware store or whatever your outdoor store and you get you know mulch right so it's great for stuff like that when you want to throw bags of mulch or or whatever just throw them right in the pickup bed and that's great for things like that um and of course yeah you can you know do bring your garbage to the dump or whatever and not have to worry about doing anything with the inside of the car uh and you're looking at what close to around 10 miles per gallon according to the epa you know better fuel economy sure right and the low entry price it's so much lower than a big full-size truck so i'm going to use those those are some of the real benefits of this and so yeah this is not a vehicle you're going to take off off-road okay it's front-wheel drive as you said it's you can't even get it in all-wheel drive don't even think about you know a low range right so this is not you know normal pickups we think of you can take them off-road they're really burly this is not that at all this is a car and there are some other downsides you know i was talking about some downsides well you know it's a hybrid and there's been some issues uh we've noticed some hybrids don't have you know as linear of brakes as regular cars yeah this one has some of those same issues low speed brakes low speed braking can get grabby or when the regen starts hitting in and it feels a little weird and so these are just things that you're going to have to learn to put up with and learn to kind of change your you're going to have to work a little harder at modulating the brakes to have it stop exactly where you want these are some of the things with the hybrid right you know the one thing we talked you you guys were talking about i mean i was just listening and learning um about the way the powertrain fills in are hybrids almost perfect now versus when they were introduced and are they almost being overshadowed now by the push to evs i mean because much like the ford escape hybrid okay the base escape was annoying you know the engine would rev you know you had that power fill in need or such the hybrid got rid of that right you know we look at hyundai's in hyundai tucson the hyundai santa fe the hyundai elantra all the hybrid versions are better yeah they're scoring better in our and our tesla they're just more livable and you get the mileage like if this isn't the day of the honda accord hybrid when it first came out where they're like it's the performance one you're like all that money for what it's not really faster and it's not really a great mileage is this the era that hybrid should be shining they make the most sense right now if you ask me they do they make a ton of sense uh and i think the difference with this one is that there are some things that you do you know put up with for it being a hybrid but it's hard to overlook that fuel economy it's really hard to overlook that fuel economy gain and this is the first pickup truck to ever come standard with a hybrid powertrain that's unheard of right so i think that we're getting to that point and it's kind of a shame you said so we're moving it seems like the industry's moving to evs just as all these hybrids because at first hybrids there were you know the braking issues i talked about were far worse than what this maverick has this is just a little bit of non-linearity in the braking sometimes it felt like you had a hockey puck between the the you know the rotor and the caliper and you were and this is just one that works it's like cvts are getting better you know this is not one of the best but it's pretty good and certainly better than the early ones so yeah they're getting so good filling in those holes and that's exactly what this thing does with the electric drive it's filling in the the holes and getting rid of the lugginess uh vibrations of the turbo maverick so i mean yeah it's definitely has some improvements but in this case you also have some some drawbacks with the front wheel drive only 2 000 pound towing capacity and of course you have a tiny bed no matter which maverick you buy it's a tiny bit sure sure would it be a take it to the mountain bike trail throw the throw the mat over the back and uh you know so you wouldn't go too deep you're not going yeah yeah you can get to the trailhead yeah yeah right yeah and you don't want one of those tailgate mats for sure because uh the bed is just uh you're not gonna be able to throw you know bikes really in the back very easily yeah so cool so go to consumerreports.org for more information our first drive on the maverick hybrid as well as our test results for the maverick xlt turbo that we tested um with that we're going to move to our next section which comes from content that you send us so email us questions video questions text talking cars at icloud.com that's talking cars at icloud.com send them in um you know we we want a varied selection of questions from you our our audience that brings us to kurt's question who says i need a lesson for physics dummies please explain how coasting and braking charges the battery in a hybrid or electric vehicle i know how brakes work that they create heat due to friction but how is that captured and used to charge the battery so we have an answer and then uh ryan's going to give it to us and then monty and i are going to fill in with some lane comments so ryan tell us about the answer to kurt's question so yeah he's he's he's right about the um you know a traditional car with regular brakes you step on a brake pedal it squeezes a um the caliper squeezes the rotor that's attached to your wheel and creates um you get heat out of that because that's wasted energy conservation of uh energy one of the laws uh energy cannot be it cannot be created or destroyed only transformed into something else so that's what we're doing there we're transforming the energy of your car slowing down into heat and it's just wasted energy unfortunately electric motors or evs you know evs are hybrids that have an electric motor inside of them can actually use the power so when you're you're on the accelerator you're driving you're putting power from your battery is going to the um to the electric motor to your wheels it's pushing you along when you lift off now you're coasting and the motor your wheel is still attached to that um electric motor through the through the you know drivetrain and spinning that back and it basically in reverse putting energy back into the battery but you're slowing down because you're fighting the um the forced energy it takes to turn that electric motor which creates that electricity so it's just kind of it's it's it's more in-depth than that nowadays i mean the technology that the the in the things that they're doing to maximize all that stuff it's very um it's not as rudimentary as i just said you're not just going backwards in power but it's basically it's basically if you think of it that your electric motor is powering the wheels to accelerate right spinning one direction right now the wheels are powering the electric motor right to to uh capture this energy back you know right battery right when the energy yeah so when the energy at the wheel and goes back into the motor is greater than the power the energy that was being put to the motor from the battery side which is going to be none because you're off the throttle it reverses the poles and it sends it back into the battery so there's controllers in there that are controlling how this is going and you know like a hybrid car you have the gas motors involved too charging the battery too so there's a whole um and you can do all of that depending on the vehicle you could choose the amount how aggressive the regeneration is right so then there's all of that i mean some of these new ones you can turn off completely so you feels like a normal car just coast or you can make it real aggressive so you drive with just one pedal that's what one pedal drive is um so you're the brake pedal essentially is kind of built into that um gas pedal in a sense but if you need to stop an emergency stop you have to step on the brake pedal and it will use some regen braking but it'll all it'll go to your calibers you still have calipers um regular traditional brakes if you will on a hybrid or ev because when you need to stop stop that's when that comes in but the uh distance cruise control just distance sensing um uh adaptive cruise control uh often in hybrids electrics use that as a way of slowing the vehicle versus oh sure you know so they're capturing the energy there right um but in general since motor spins one way motor spins the other way and it's all about capturing that heat that otherwise would just be wasted and go into the um it was not even heat it's just going back into the the that torque from the wheels just going back into the electric motor there's no heat the heat is wasted wasted right so i mean there is some heat involved but it's very minimal it's not as if it's sucking the heat in to turn the motor right yeah and that's kind of the way the question was written and that's not the case it's you're we're creating electricity through the the same very same electric motor that is pushing you it's kind of a genius thing because it's just the same thing you don't have to have now a generator there too i mean that's essentially what an electric motor and generator are very similar um they're just in terms of which way the current is going well kurt hope that answers your question and that's going to do it for this episode we are really happy to be back uh here in person it's it's been a long time coming remember send us your questions talking cars at icloud.com that way three other people say at this table can answer your questions thanks for watching and we'll see you next episode\n"