My understanding (not a Tesla vehicle owner) is that you may pick the regenerative mode of the car: low or standard. Low allows for the coasting experience of d

My understanding (not a Tesla vehicle owner) is that you may pick the regenerative mode of the car: low or standard. Low allows for the coasting experience of driving a car with an Internal Combustion Engine. Standard allows the electric motor(s) to slow down the vehicle when the pedal is let up for regenerative effect. In either scenario, I believe both the motor and disc brakes are utilized when the brake pedal is depressed; however, the general theme is that more kinetic energy is lost to thermal from disc brake friction in the Low scenario. My thoughts are that regeneration of the battery is encouraged, but the marketing of the Model S appears such that Tesla Motors wants to deliver EV luxury & performance first, and foremost and then cleverly extend it behind the scenes in such a way that the user need not think about it. To me, it's not all that different from flagship smartphones. Actively 'hypermiling' a flagship smartphone for battery life would compromise many of the flagship features... which aren't suprisingly luxury and performance.