One-pedal driving in electric cars

IN 1894, WHEN Louis Antoine Krieger started making electrically powered horseless carriages (pictured above), he introduced a feature that had appeared earlier on some electric trains. The motors that drove the front wheels of Krieger's landaulet could operate in reverse, to work as generators when the driver slowed down. That let them recover kinetic energy from the vehicle's forward motion, turn it into electricity and use this to top up the battery. But there was another benefit. The harvesti...