>>>>Sounds good. I suppose though you have to brake a lot to build up potential, thus needing to replace the brakes more often, with the power it requires to make new brakes. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch :-)
>>>
>>>Ah just look it up - it doesn't use brakes for breaking as long as it can use the momentum to turn the electric motor, using it as a generator. So it's not the heat that's transformed, it's the dynamic energy which is _not_ transformed into heat, but back into electricity. So it's still not a free lunch (had to use some gasoline at some point to produce that momentum); it's rather the part of the lunch which was previously thrown away.
>>
>>So I aught to force my kids to eat the crusts off their sandwiches to get them ready for the cars of tommorrow?
>
>No force. Just start enjoying the crust yourself.

I've always enjoyed the crust. When I was a kid my grandma used to say "Eat the crust and your hair will go curly". I tried that on our kids (who have my straight hair while Debbie's is curly) and they told me they don't want curly hair. I realised it was a lie though, as mine never did. Mind you, all girls are straightening their hair nowadays (except Naomi, who hasn't got a chance).

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>Though, if British bread is like the bread here, then I wouldn't call it crust. It's not worth the name.

No way! We use American bread to package electrical goods inside their cardboard boxes.

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>>Anyway, look it up where? I see no ref's.
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>They call it "regenerative braking" - google it up, or go straight to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking for the definition (though they go into more detail on railway than cars).

Acknowledged.

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>>I was thinking of the car's momentum to drive a generator but then I thought, well cars have been doing that for decades - how come that hasn't been utilised? Then I figured that for some electro-mechanical reason that wasn't feasible/efficient enough.
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>That reason was cheap oil and market forces.