If you can avoid assist on the accelerations, you don't have to regen to recharge it.
I know how hard that is, though. Honda was very aggressive on the assist logic. You think about pressing the pedal, and it assists from the battery pack.
I believe the GM 2-mode hybrids to have a electric-only mode (mode 2). That puts them in the same class as the Toyota and Fords.
The 06+ Honda hybrids have a very low friction mode that the engine goes into instead of completely detaching it from the IMA. It's maybe halfway there to a full electric-only mode, and a definite improvement over the first gen system.