While regenerative braking is most common in electric vehicles, this also is not unique to electric vehicles. A hybrid vehicle can just as easily benefit from this, such as the Prius.

> Additional weight by itself does not waste energy. It does require more power to accelerate. The extra power is turned into higher kinetic energy for the same cruising speed. However kinetic energy is not waste. It can be recovered during deacceleration.

This is incorrect unless the engine/motor, drivetrain, and tires are all 100% efficient - additional weight always wastes energy.

But I agree with you, electric vehicles are more energy efficient than gasoline vehicles.

If you momentarily ignore the fact that its ultimate energy source is gasoline and focus only on the regen system a hybrid is an electric vehicle, just one that (sadly) lacks a plug.

Not just the lack of regen. ICEs waste energy while idling, as heat, noise, and vibration, and mechanical couplings like clutches and especially fluid couplings in automatic transmissions also waste energy. Automatic transmissions in particular are only 90% mechanically efficient, on top of all the losses from the ICE.

Changing that weight distribution is very expensive from a R&D perspective. Sometimes the battery is moved, or the engine is moved a few inches relative to the front axle. This is one of the reasons performance oriented cars are often rather large compared to their usable interior volumes.

Battery operated cars do have a weight penalty, but you can put that weight wherever you want. You could relatively trivially make a 50/50 distributor of significantly front or rear biased with no substantial R&D overhead or loss of efficiency.

For instance the Tesla model 3 not only has a very low center of gravity, but also a very low polar momentum. In an ice car that would require a mid engine design (like a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or the newest Corvette. While having an large usable volume, more like a bmw 5 series than a 3).

So basically weight distribution is easy to tweak with batteries, and even with the weight penalty have a substantial lead in efficiency.

> So basically weight distribution is easy to tweak with batteries

No. You can do this when designing the car, but not afterwards. You want more weight in the regular pickup truck? Throw it in the back. You want less? Take it out. You can't take the batteries out of the electric vehicle. All my original comment said was you can add weight to the back of a pickup truck to improve traction on the rear axle. I didn't talk about center of gravity, or performance vehicles, or even mention that electric vehicles are heavier.

I am astounded by the amount of comments taking something I said, responding to it maybe tangentially and then concluding with "well that's why electric vehicles are better!" Let's just agree to disagree.

> I was not making a general comparison between the pros and cons of electric vehicles

And you replied:

> Yes, but on the converse side...[something that has nothing to do with traction]

Am I unintentionally arguing that electric vehicles are bad? I get the impression people think I hate electric vehicles and are trying to convince me of their virtues, when I was simply pointing out what I thought was a logical flaw from another commenter.