You're going to lose a lot more than 5% in the motor. You will also lose more to rolling resistance, various hystereses, etc...

Even assuming 100% inverter efficiency you will lose at least 20% in the regen part of the cycle alone.

Motors can get well above 95% efficiency, even at a wide range of speeds and torques.

Eg. See https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/y83JG/s3/tesla-motor-effic...

They can when they are being used to produce kinetic energy. Using a motor as a generator however has much lower efficiency.

Absolute nonsense. Motors are do not care whether they are generating or consuming electrical power. It is a fundamental fact of induction that rotation in the motor creates a reverse voltage- motors literally would not work if they did not have very similar efficiency as generators.

The only differences between a motor and a generator in practice are cost optimizations and fixed-frequency optimizations. Industrial generators run at fixed speeds, unlike EV motors, so they can be built more cheaply. EV motors are not any less efficient when used to recapture power.

That is true in theory. In practice, when using the motor as a generator, the operating conditions are different, and so are the efficiencies. The load side is also different, the motor controller will not act the same way as the inertia of the car.

For example, even the simple inductance and resistance of the motor means that at the same speed and at the same load angle you will see a lower voltage at the poles of the motor when acting as a generator. When your motor has high efficiency, these differences can lead to a large absolute difference when running as a generator.

You could say the same thing about how speakers/microphones are equivalent. But it should be clear that some of those devices are tuned for outputting sound vs inputting sound, or vice versa.

> If you loose 5% in the motors, 5% in the power electronics and 5% in the battery

You realize SiC is not the savior for all your problems right?

I'm not saying efficiency doesn't matter, I'm saying this is not gonna improve range significantly, there is a difference.

The GP's point is that this is not about maximum range, it's about increasing range in city transit that is normally much smaller.

Both gains seem relevant to me.

EVs typically have more range in city transit than on the highway.

Totally! X^n with 0<X<1 quickly goes to zero as n increases. You get about 6 of those cycles if X=.9 before you lose 50% of what you started with initially.