"It pays off to avoid this: more mileage, marginally lower charging expense, lower cost on brake maintenance and fewer complaints from passengers."
Regen braking wears the hell out of your battery. That few hundred you saved on brake changes just cost you a tens of thousands of dollars on a premature battery replacement.
It's an added charge cycle on the battery. A guy in San Diego does full EIS and more for EV cells. His data shows multiple shorter recharge cycles wear the battery down faster, no matter what range you try restricting the recharging to. Same data shows that the batteries are better when conditioned harder on their first charge, gaining much better cycle performance and count, at a minimal sacrifice of capacity.
And this exact same thing coincides DIRECTLY with my lithium-powered portable lighting, so I'm pretty up-to-date on very top-level research, because I hire this same person.
His name is Luke. You'll see him all over the globe doing lithium EV research and testing.
A charge cycle is a charge cycle, regardless. The wear and tear that occurs during is cumulative and doesn't just magically disappear when restricted to a certain level of battery depletion.
Regen braking wears the hell out of your battery. That few hundred you saved on brake changes just cost you a tens of thousands of dollars on a premature battery replacement.