> If the car's manufacturer suggests multiple small recharge-charge cycles (using regenerative braking) to do that, why would I distrust them?
The answer is simple -- they're wrong. Regenerative braking cannot recover more energy than was lost in getting the car to its present velocity, so the advice to engage in stop-and-go driving emanates from someone who doesn't understand physics.
Phase 1: Acceleration -- energy is provided by the battery to the car's electric motors. The battery energy required is greater than or equal to the car's final velocity as shown in m * v^2 / 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy).
Phase 2: Braking (deceleration) -- energy may be recovered from the act of braking and delivered to the battery. There are two choices -- either turn the car's energy into heat with brake pads, or turn some of it into electrical energy that flows back into the battery using a method called "regenerative braking".
Can the energy recovered by Phase 2 equal the energy expended in Phase 1? No, this is not possible -- because of the second law of thermodynamics, one cannot recover all the energy, there are inevitable losses.
Therefore (read carefully) stop-and-go driving is always less efficient than driving at a fixed speed. Always.
> I know almost nothing about the chemistry of the batteries, and even less about their control software.
I'm not addressing what you may or may not know, only what the facts are. And if someone at Tesla actually offered the advice to engage in stop-and-go driving in order to increase the car's range, someone needs to go back to school.
The answer is simple -- they're wrong. Regenerative braking cannot recover more energy than was lost in getting the car to its present velocity, so the advice to engage in stop-and-go driving emanates from someone who doesn't understand physics.
Phase 1: Acceleration -- energy is provided by the battery to the car's electric motors. The battery energy required is greater than or equal to the car's final velocity as shown in m * v^2 / 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy).
Phase 2: Braking (deceleration) -- energy may be recovered from the act of braking and delivered to the battery. There are two choices -- either turn the car's energy into heat with brake pads, or turn some of it into electrical energy that flows back into the battery using a method called "regenerative braking".
Can the energy recovered by Phase 2 equal the energy expended in Phase 1? No, this is not possible -- because of the second law of thermodynamics, one cannot recover all the energy, there are inevitable losses.
Therefore (read carefully) stop-and-go driving is always less efficient than driving at a fixed speed. Always.
> I know almost nothing about the chemistry of the batteries, and even less about their control software.
I'm not addressing what you may or may not know, only what the facts are. And if someone at Tesla actually offered the advice to engage in stop-and-go driving in order to increase the car's range, someone needs to go back to school.