"Regenerative braking improves overall efficiency and prolongs brake component life."
Industrial equipment advertisement
Regenerative brakes were designed by the American Motors Corporation (AMC) in the 1960s as a way to increase the potential range of electric cars and match the performance of their fossil fuel-burning contemporaries. The resulting car, the Amitron, built in 1967, never made it into full production.
A brake is a device that converts kinetic energy (movement) into another type of energy. Traditional braking systems use the friction of a brake pad to slow down the vehicle, turning its kinetic energy into heat. This system is effective but not energy-efficient—it would be much more resourceful to try to recover some of the kinetic energy back in the form of fuel.
The problem with vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels is that it is impossible to turn inertia back into petroleum. In an electric vehicle, however, the problem can be solved with regenerative brakes. Motion is normally provided in an electric vehicle by electricity passing through coils, creating a magnetic field that repels magnets on a movable part, the rotor. If, during braking, that process is reversed, the magnets generate electricity in the coils, which can then be stored.
Regenerative brakes have proved very useful in other electric vehicles, particularly trains, where they typically improve efficiency by about 15 percent.
