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Re:TV, or not TV: the story of our bike box (2019) by Xylakant on Monday July 18, 2022 @05:33PM (#32144141)
The electric cars I have tried all started regenerative braking when you let go of the accelerator. As an additional problem for bikes: they are rear-wheel drive and the primary braking power comes from the front wheel for normal bikes (load distribution shift to the front when braking). Cargo bikes and tandems are a bit of an exception here. I’m not saying it’s impossible - as I wrote above I know it exists. It’s just a lot of effort for comparatively little gain, and so it’s pretty rare.
Re:TV, or not TV: the story of our bike box (2019) by bombcar on Monday July 18, 2022 @05:52PM (#32144402)
I think that's the main thing - the amount of energy lost by bringing a bike to a stop is nothing compared to that of bringing a car to a stop from 60 MPH.

And they're probably better off just adding a generator in-line with the pedals (in fact, I'm surprised these things have "direct drive" at all and aren't just a generator on the pedals with a wire to a motor on the front/rear hub).