regenerative brakes

The regenerative braking system in the BMW i3 electric car is quite extreme. If you plan ahead and allow enough stopping distance, by lifting off the accelerator, this little electric car will come to a complete stop, without ever requiring a touch of the brake pedal. That behavior recently led...

With little morethan three weeks to go until the 2016 Chevrolet Volt is revealed, its maker is dribbling out more tantalizing details on the all-new car. The latest is a YouTube video published yesterday that shows two members of the development team--familiar faces to Volt fans--demonstrating a...

A Nissan Leaf puts its regenerative brakes to good use traversing Hawaii's Haleakala volcano.

Regenerative braking is a standard and expected part of any electrified car now, from Honda's mild hybrids up through battery-electric vehicles like the Tesla Model S. It lets the car recapture energy from momentum, which would otherwise be wasted as brake heat, by running the electric motor in...

Mazda’s most recently redesigned models all feature the SkyActiv badge—corresponding to a suite of engines, transmissions, body structures, and other core components engineered around the idea of maintaining a responsive, sporty driving feel while making major improvements in fuel...

It's pretty easy to take regenerative braking for granted, these days--virtually every electric and hybrid car on sale uses it to some extent. Maybe we should be a little more appreciative of its benefits, as Ford estimates owners of its vehicles have saved 100 million gallons of gasoline over the...

Paddle shifters on an electric vehicle might seem like a bit of an engineering oversight. After all, what use is manual control over gears if there are no gears to control? Think laterally though, and the appearance of paddle shifters in the 2014 Cadillac ELR makes a lot of sense--variable...

In hybrid and electric cars, regenerative braking systems are used to convert kinetic energy into electrical energy under braking, slowing the car down and improving gas mileage or all-electric range. But Nissan’s latest iteration of the Japanese-market Serena minivan uses regenerative...

Driving pre-production prototypes of new electric cars is part of life here at GreenCarReports, as it enables us to give you the best possible evaluation of an up-coming new car before it hits the dealer lots. Recently however, we got a chance to sit behind the wheel again of the Volkswagen Golf...

If you drive a plug-in car or a hybrid, the chance are you’ll be familiar with the concept of regenerative braking. But although regenerative braking might be the preferred way to slow down a plug-in or hybrid car, it could mean that your car’s traditional friction brakes don’t...

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt adds hidden fuel-free miles to the Volt’s total range

Pretty much anyone who's driven one loves the performance of the Tesla Roadster, the first modern electric car with a lithium-ion battery pack. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is a much less radical electric car than the Roadster in certain ways, and one of them is its accelerator response. Volt: Just like...

Another day, another hybrid braking problem. Only this time, it's not Toyota. It's Ford. Late yesterday, Ford announced a "customer satisfaction program" that will ask that owners of 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid and 2010 Mercury Milan Hybrid models built before October 17 to bring the cars to their...

UPDATE: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal inquiry into the brakes of the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid. It has now received 124 complaints of faulty brakes, out of roughly 37,000 of the cars sold to date in the U.S. Toyota said it would cooperate fully with the...

Things are moving fast in the land of Toyota safety issues and recalls. Yesterday, we told you that the 2010 Toyota Prius was being investigated for braking problems in Japan. Today, Toyota has admitted that most 2010 Prius models (those built between the start of production last spring and late...

We've written before about some of the misconceptions around high-mileage and electric cars, among them that they're essentially glorified golf carts. Now the test engineers for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt have taken their  extended-range electric vehicle up the twisty 19-mile road to the top of...