why can’t electric cars be charged by their own movement?
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The car’s functions use more energy than the amount of energy that can be made by the car. Charging a battery would actually take some energy itself. Since you mentioned “by their own movement” let’s look at an aspect of that. A car has wind resistance. If you wanted to harness the energy of the wind rushing over the car, that would cause even more resistance (just as some of wind’s energy is used to turn the blades of a turbine before the rest is converted to electricity) causing the car to have to expend more energy to compensate and that would be more than the wind would generate. Say the normal energy required =5. Wind capture gives 1 back to battery (4). Increased wind resistance causes car to work harder to and takes 2 from battery. End result car now needs energy 6 to run.
Add that to the energy the car uses to just keep running (friction of moving parts, friction with the road/ gravity) there is no way, even if a wind capture system *wasn’t* a net loss, that it could power the whole vehicle. All other types of “car powering itself by it’s own functions” run on the same principle. You lose energy by friction or resistance capturing the energy you get to use. Obviously regenerative breaking can capture energy, but that is because it is actively working against the car’s movement, which of course you want to do when braking, but not when you are moving forward.
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