What about breaking? Is done on the wheel or on the motor?
(One real surprise with our new Bolt is that you can't do regenerative braking when the battery is full - there's no place to dump the energy. Makes sense once you think about it).
The simplicity of electric cars is one of their big advantages, but also one of the reasons that US dealers (other than Tesla, obviously) aren't enthusiastic about selling them. There's almost no periodic maintenance to be done, and little to break, so little in the way of post-sale revenue.
So it isn't THAT early, if you add in 115 years of development.
The drivetrain is relatively simple. One motor on the rear or front axel, sometimes one on each. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-drivetrain-design-el...
Recuperation doesn't cover all necessary brake performance, plus, you don't want to have a car without brakes at the wheels. The moment the driveshaft breaks, you wouldn't be able to brake your car, if braking was only facilitated by the engine.
This actually killed at least one race driver, Jochen Rindt, Monza 1970, in his Lotus 72.
All of the above, although by far the most common power train arrangement is motor per axle with a 2-speed transmission for however many axles are driven. Regenerative braking is done at the motor and augmented by conventional brakes.
Very few designs use motor-per-wheel.
Later production doesn't seem to find the transmission necessary.
When the car brakes about 70% of breaking force is at the front wheels, so wouldn't regenerative breaking be more effective for the cars with the motor at the front and not at the back (like in Tesla)?
This gives regenerative braking more than enough grip for normal braking but probably not emergency braking which would require more braking power. So what it comes down to is that if the rear tires are not breaking loose and the car isn't using friction brakes then the car is recovering as much energy as it can with regenerative breaking.