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I've always thought that there should be a coast/regen option.
When I had the Nissan Leaf I would constantly be shifting into neutral. This allowed me to coast to slow down.
With my hybrids, if the engine stops I will do the same thing and shift into neutral. But if the engine is running I don't want it to run just because and not do something productive. So I will feather the accelerator pedal to where the vehicle is close to neutral. It's sure hard to feather it exactly in a neutral position though.
I'd prefer a way to chose between coasting when I take my foot off the pedal and several levels of regen. I think this could be easily integrated into the shifter, from a manufacturer's standpoint. I wonder if I could do something to my hybrids to do the same.
When to coast vs When to regen
The first thing that comes to mind is safety. The more you coast the sooner you have to let off the pedal before a turn or stop. In a town where there's one stop sign and then another down a block or two, you may have to barely get any speed in order to coast to the next stop, even if you're going to use your brakes a little. Driving around at 10-15mph on 25-35mph streets not only causes everyone else to want to kill you, but also kind of defeats the purpose of having a faster-than walking/biking vehicle.
Since there are a lot of hills aroud where I live, also taking into account how much speed can be lost/regained off of the next hill affects my decision to coast or not. A lot of times I will start to coast, even though I start going slower than the speed limit. Then, as I get speed back up I'm back at the speed limit by the time I'm at the bottom. It takes me longer to get to that speed, but at least I'm not accelerating than braking, even if it is regen braking. I do take into consideration if there's someone behind me and if there's a passing lane and if there's traffic coming that prevents those behind me to be able to pass.
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