Higher regen level always gives you more range and saves brakes even if you coast the most time
But no regen lowers range at all cause you need to pull brakes in case.
Or do I get something wrong?
You get MUCH better range on the freeway with very little or no deceleration regen at all. The regen slows the bike down, which wastes range at higher speeds when compared to coasting. However, things are different when you MUST stop or MUST slow down. Then you want all the regen you can get. So it's best to have no deceleration regen and the max braking regen on the freeway. But the Zeros can do that, the SS9 has no way of doing such so it is best to just keep the regen off while on the freeway to get the best longest coasting instead of wasting power by letting the bike slow down which has to be made up later, such as coasting down hill and then uphill.
Going downhill with regen, at best, will give you back 10% of the energy to get back up the same hill. But you lost more than 50% by letting the bike slow down and that power is needed to get back up the same hill. So you lose a lot more range by deceleration regen by not coasting as well compared to deceleration regen being off.
At slow city speeds, this reverses as then we have too many reason why we MUST stop and MUST slow down, unlike when on the freeway. So now you benefit a lot by having as much deceleration regen as possible, as it also helps save your brakes. Same with braking regen. IMO, with only rare exceptions, braking regen should always be at 100% all the time regardless of speed. But only the Zeros allow the separate settings for braking and deceleration regen.
FWIW, my Tesla also does not have braking regen. But at slow speeds it has so much deceleration regen that it is almost like slamming on the brakes when I let go of the pedal. Because of this, the brake light then comes on without me touching the brake. In the Tesla, as speed increases the regen automatically becomes MUCH less. So there are different ways of doing some of this stuff.
With my two Zeros, I use my custom mode for the freeway, 20% deceleration regen, 100% braking regen. The only reason I keep the deceleration regen at 20% is because that bike coasts the same at 20% as off. I cannot notice any difference. The Zeros do NOT coast well even when it's off. The SS9 coasts very with regen all the way off, but not even at the lowest setting.
-Don- Auburn, CA