A Toyota Corolla with a 1.8L engine requires 6.2 liters of gas to drive for 100 kilometers on a highway. But on city roads, it would require 7.9 liters of gas. A 2022 Ford F-150 requires 9.4 and 12.1 liters per 100 km for highway and city driving, respectively.
Regenerative braking has more influence on battery charge in stop-and-go traffic than it does on thw highway
As well, EV’s lose very little of their energy to heat or other losses between the battery and wheels unlike ICE vehicles. The result is drag plays a more significant percentage of where the energy is “going”, so the impact of higher speeds on range is greater then it is for ICE vehicles.
This was a lab test so regenerative braking didn’t factor, they just measured how much power they got from discharging the battery at full vs half load.
If you draw more power from a battery, you get more voltage drop. Voltage drop is a measure of the power lost (heat generated) within the battery and circuitry and it’s the internal resistance of the battery plus circuitry multiplied by the amps drawn. More power = more amps = more losses. This is why higher power applications use higher voltage battery packs because higher voltages mean fewer amps and smaller losses (power = amps x volts).
This is a great little summary. I knew these principles but this puts 2 and 2 together nicely.
You beat me to it, regenerative braking is strong in modern EVs. In several of them you can one-foot drive them, meaning take your foot off the throttle pedal, and the generator(s) will start harvesting hard enough to slow the car to a stop, charging the batteries the whole time. You only need the brake to emergency stop. And if you do choose to brake, you are just harvesting even more energy.