Electricity is a funny demon. But like the old saying goes: "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Power (or "energy") is ALWAYS lost through friction, heat, resistance, etc.
You'll never get MORE out of what you put in.

A fun experiment is to get a cheapy little 40-amp alternator. Hook it up to a battery source and a regulator and now YOU try to turn that alternator. You might be able to; but not sustainably enough to be useful.
Now, get a 200-amp alternator from a big truck and do the same thing. A small team of dogs wouldn't be able to turn it. You would need the mass of something; like a car - to be able to turn that sucker.

Lots of the electric things have regenerative braking - and this is a wonderful thing. But you can't have it ON all the time - the drag would be immense and you'd be wasting 10x more energy trying to get something out of it.

Why don't race cars have alternators? It's not because they don't have headlights! It's because that little chargin' whirler saps up an easy 5hp. The bigger the alternator, the more hp it takes away!


Personally, I think we should be looking more into Hybrid/Turbine technology. A small Turbine powerplant that has three states: OFF, idle or RUN and therefore can be tuned to run as cleanly as possible. It's only job is to turn a generator that can power an electric motor and maybe a small, backup battery. A multi-fuel Turbine would not only be able to run off of ANY combustible fuel, it can be tuned to run as cleanly or cleaner than any current internal combustion engine; but it's maintenance now drops to ZERO and moving parts/failure rate plummets. Win-Win for the consumer; not so much for the manufacturer.

But I also think we've gotten away from simple reliability. I firmly believe ALL electric cars should have a simple, planetary transmission. Why? Very Simple. A "classic" three-speed or even 2-speed transmission would:

Provide a "PARKing" position that everybody and their dog is used to.
A much simpler reverse function - rather than reversing the electric motor (which requires big, heavy circuit breakers and relays) - just do it hydraulically.
A NEUTRAL position for pushing/towing that not all electrics have!!
Drive for every day driving.
Gear reduction should such an idea be necessary.

But, the other great thing about a simple transmission would be it's fluid pump. I don't think it would be much parasitic loss to have that same pump power a hydraulic power steering unit and a hydroboost brake unit. We could also plumb a heater matrix into the fluid system because the fluid will get warm. Why not dissipate that heat through the cabin rather than have 39 separate electric systems doing all these jobs.

I really think the designers of today believe themselves to be much smarter than they actually are. None of them have ever heard of the phrase "Putting the cart before the horse." They've no idea what a cart nor a horse is.