There is a rationale for this. When you are driving down a road at an even speed you use far less horsepower than when accelerating or going up a hill. One of the original concepts for electric cars was to have a small gas motor to keep the charge up as you drove along. You would be using
far less fuel. Using regenerative braking you also dump charge back in. You can get much improved fuel economy and, with an electric motor, you get vastly better torque than a gas motor could ever achieve. These ideas were developed long before eco-wackos adopted electric vehicles as the govt mandated solution to ICEs.
???
Wow. Kool-Aide.
Ya think all those extras that repurpose the already expended energy from the initial charge actually add anything back in? You know, there is a few laws, not sure who passed them or when ( I really do know, just kidding) but they state that equal and opposite, conservation of motion/energy and friction and heat waste and all sorts of other nit-picky laws. Maybe we ought to repeal them so electric vehicles can simply hook into a passing thunderhead and voila’, freee unlimited miles!