It's more of "With thermodynamics we care only about the thrust to get up to speed. If we add regeneration then we can even factor most of that out, getting us to energy expenditures so very tiny that they're irrelevant to the total."

I could have phrased it better.

Got it, and likewise I could have not made assumptions and jumped to the conclusion that I understood your comment. I got lost between theory and practice. I think I agree with all of what you said when we're talking about theoretical limits and theoretical near 100% efficient regeneration. It's just that in practice, regenerative braking on a Tesla is not that efficient, and it isn't something that recovers most of your energy spent accelerating, it only recovers a minority share normally, and often only a very small minority.