Regenerative Braking — Force-Speed Envelope & Brake-Pad Thermal Fade (2D)

This 2D companion to the 3D regenerative-braking simulator strips the scene down to the numbers that actually govern a stop: a force-vs-speed chart shows the motor's real torque-limited/power-limited regen envelope directly, with the demand line, the regen ceiling and a live operating-point dot all drawn to scale so you can see exactly where a stop crosses from torque-limited to power-limited braking. Underneath it, a genuine physics the 3D scene does not model: every stop dumps friction-brake heat into a lumped pad/rotor thermal mass, cooled by speed-dependent airflow, and once pad temperature crosses a fade threshold the friction brakes' own force ceiling starts dropping — so a hard stop, or several stops back-to-back in the Rush-Hour Commute mode, can make the achieved deceleration fall measurably short of the driver's pedal demand. Watch the strip chart trace speed and pad temperature together across a run to see how city-style moderate stops (mostly regen, little heat) differ from a hard highway stop or a heat-accumulating commute.