Brakes certainly, but all motion still needs to be stopped through friction against the ground. EVs are significantly heavier for the time being, so if anything they have greater wear on tires all else equal.
The LEAF curb weight is 3,516 to 3,919 lbs, while the Versa is 2,599 to 2,729 lbs
At the midpoint, the LEAF is over 1000lbs or about 40% heavier.
Nissan Rogue (similar sized ICE): 3457# (2WD S) - 3713# (Platinum AWD)
1328 lbs, 37% more.
2020 Tesla Model 3 = 1584 kg curb weight [1]
2019 BMW 320i = 1470 kg curb weight [2]
[1] https://www.cars-data.com/en/tesla-model-3-standard-range-pl...
But that's not really true, either with an EV with regen braking or standard brakes. With standard brakes, it's the friction and heat at the brake pads that causes deceleration. With regen braking, the energy of deceleration is going to charge the batteries.
After all, energy can't be created or destroyed. So if you're storing it in batteries, it's coming out of your forward momentum.
However it would not stop a vehicle on a zero friction surface, as a simple example, so no it doesn’t take away from the friction heat losses on the road.
100%. Brakes do not stop a car, tires do. Brakes just manage the energy. Putting it back into a battery so it can be used to accelerate again is great, but it's still the tires stopping the car.
Now in the case of regenerative braking, the losses from the charging do also dissipate the energy, but most of it goes back into the battery to be used for driving which, over time, is transferred into the tires and the air.
It's important to remember that ideal wheels are not actually moving with respect to the surface they roll over. From the tire's perspective the road is not moving in any direction other than up and down, repeatedly touching the tire and then not touching it again at different points. As long as you maintain static friction when braking and don't start skidding, for ideal wheels, you're not transferring any energy to the tire or to the road.
Now, real tires are not ideal wheels so there's some differences, but those are minor components compared to the majority of energy being dissipated in charging the battery or into heating up/wearing down brakes. And indeed when driving, the majority of loss of energy is from air resistance, not the tires.
Sure, from a lay perspective. Though I stop my car routinely without ever touching the brakes. Even my gas car does a non-trivial amount of braking without using friction pads. But the point stands. Brakes don't touch the road, the tire does, so it matters not at all how you apply force to the wheel, from the perspective of the tire-to-road interface it's all the same.
If we want to have some fun with the physics, brake pads don't use dynamic friction to stop the car, either. Not most of the time, at least. Which is why they last as long as they do.
> Brakes don't touch the road, the tire does, so it matters not at all how you apply force to the wheel, from the perspective of the tire-to-road interface it's all the same.
This is not the case. Brakes (or regenerative braking) absorb the energy of motion into heat or stored chemical energy. The tires are not doing the stopping.
> brake pads don't use dynamic friction to stop the car
This is also incorrect. Brake pads are using almost completely dynamic friction to stop the car. From the perspective of the brake bads the tire is moving and from the perspective of the tire the brake pads are moving. There's no static friction involved there.