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BMW has been doing this as standard for 10+ years. They call it efficient dynamics.

Basically a lot of the extra things like power steering and water pump are electric instead of engine driven. And the generator is set to run as much as possible only when decelerating / braking. So it's using energy that would normally go to waste in a non-hybrid car. The battery is 1kwh which is enough for this purpose.

They haven't incuded the air conditioning pump in this, probably because it requires more power than the electrical system on a non-hybrid car could handle.



Mazda do this kind of thing too, particularly charging during engine braking and using that power to start the engine during stop start.




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