I was going to until No. 14 popped up. If you work for an anvil company at the top of a mountain and your job is to deliver to dealers in the valley then no, you don't use more energy going up the hill than you get back going down. But, of course, that's hardly a normal situation. Taking your family up the mountain to a park and bringing them home with regen you should consume only a little more than driving them to the beach and back (assuming that you live at sea level) and that "little more"comes from the fact that regen isn't 100% efficient (can't re capture all the potential energy.
Because it is empty going up, so the work going up is less than the weight and work done by gravity going down.
Right. But it proves the concept and really says that regen is pretty powerful stuff. Even if it only works in certain situations.
Exactly, it only gives us free power, much like solar energy, if we ignore all the parts that cost, just because we didn't 'pay' for them.
A wheel can be used to generate electricity while driving, however, the resistance that it causes on drag to generate electricity will have a negative effect and actually take more power to operate the vehicle. This only works during the regenerative braking or coasting when kinetic energy can be send back to the battery rather than being wasted.
