Will the car have regenerative braking (referred to as “regen”)?
I started out with this on my criteria list, but then I started looking more closely at the cost and benefit. To get efficient regen I found that an AC motor and controller would be the best choice. This system is fairly efficient and is used by most companies that have built commercial EVs. This approach has the advantage of a sophisticated controller that is built for regen. But the cost of the motor and controller alone came to something like $6,000. This definitely didn’t fit all of my other criteria. So I chose to go with a lower cost, simpler series-wound DC motor. (My brand-new motor and controller cost just under $3000.) Series-wound DC motors have been around forever and this approach appears to meet all of the other criteria for my EV. It also turns out that because most of my driving is in town and my speeds are relatively low, the amount of energy to be recovered with regen is not that great. And since regen doesn’t provide 100% efficient recovery of energy the gain would n
