When a vehicle speeds up, it uses energy of fuel/battery. Eventually it comes to a stop, which turns the kinetic energy into the heat of brakes. The brakes then cool down transferring the heat to the environment. So instead of heating up the brakes, can an electrical generator be installed to extract at least a fraction of the used energy? Or it won’t be able to stop a vehicle fast enough?
Edit: turns out it is a thing and called regenerative braking. I won’t delete the post though for anyone with the same question
In: Technology
Adding to what others have said about regenerative braking – there’s a related braking system called Eddy Current braking.
When you move a magnet past a larger chunk of metal like copper, silver or aluminum the magnet causes electrons in the metal to move (same as with a generator) but the current doesn’t have anywhere to go so it forms eddies in the chunk of metal, that generate a magnetic field that acts in the opposite direction to the magnet being moved near the metal.
The faster the magnet is moving past the copper (usually) the greater the force the induced magnetic field pushes back against the movement. This results in a very powerful braking force when you have a big enough piece of copper and a strong enough magnet.
This is used as a braking system in things like rollercoasters – the system has no moving parts and no contact or operating system so has a lot of reliability for relatively little maintenance.
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