I own a non-tesla EV which applies regenerative braking via the brake pedal. I understand tesla only applies friction brakes via brake pedal. How much deceleration do you experience by just lifting the accelerator?
In my model S at highway speeds, you can lift off the accelerator completely, and see that regen shoots to its maximum of about 60 kW/h and the experience felt right then is
negligible deceleration force. It seems to hardly be slowing, speedometer holds steady... hardly dropping at all. So you're covering a lot of ground soaking up juice.
This is about 80 braking horsepower/hour of reverse thrust ... and you feel practically nothing. Because the car is heavy and has a heck of a lot of inertia.
Until the speed does start to drop a bit... then things change if you keep off the pedals. Tesla has tuned regen so that it does not maintain maximum reverse thrust as the car slows... it eases up on the regen captured as the car slows. Power flowing backward into the battery begins to drop BUT the effect felt is ever increasing deceleration force because the car is now also decelerating more aggressively -- your body starts to press forward more into the seat belt. To a point. Whereupon, regen capture starts to relax at a more rapid rate... You then feel the car starting to slow less aggressively but still, quite firmly, and your body starts to settle back into its seat easing off the seat belt. Until finally (we're talking at very low speed now) the car just "gives up" on regen and you coast-crawl as if in neutral until road friction stops the car, or you touch the brake.
That's the experience of a highway decel with regen coming to a complete stop.
It's interesting to watch the car icon on the dash to see when brake lights come on and when they go off. All without ever touching the brake pedal. This auto-brake light is not purely related to deceleration force, but is also tied to speed and regen rate... methinks.
Overall, regen feels weird for the first 3 times, then its expected and feels completely natural. Soon, you begin "timing" your decel lift off while choosing a desired stopping point ahead, and make a game of it -- avoiding the use of friction brakes for anything other than the last foot of "stoppage" required at a STOP sign. If you're on a slight incline, bonus points if you can do the whole true stopping experience and go again, without ever touching the brake pedal.
Then you drive an ICE car again... and holysh*t when you lift off the gas pedal, that car feels like it's slipping on a greased road out from underneath you. And suddenly you remember what a brake pedal is for.