I don't think the energy consumed to go uphill is recovered on the down side.
Take 2 parallel Hot Wheels tracks 100 feet long on flat ground.
Take one of those tracks and put a series of humps along the way.
Take a marble on the end of each track and start them on their way using equal force.
If the energy was reclaimed on the downside then both marbles should reach the end at the same time- right? It slows down rolling uphill but speeds up on the other side.
Same 100' of track, same gravity, conditions etc
Depending on the severity and number of humps, the marble may even stall.
The track with humps require additional energy to compensate for gravity loss for both marbles to "tie" in the race. Perhaps if we could tilt the entire length of track for more gravity energy on the downside, and less loss on the upside of the humps.
Which brings me to load vs Cruise control.
With the last example in mind, it consumes less gasoline to allow the auto to gradually slow down over the length of a hill than for cruise control to maintain speed.
Given the situation in, for example a 65MPH limit, in the basin of a hill I might be going 68MPH. Upon the top of the next hill I'll slow to about 52-55MPH.
In the same situation if the driver wanted to go a maximum speed of...say 55MPH in the 65 limit then load wouldn't make sense.
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I'll be back in touch when I get data of 10 or 20 passes over the bridge.
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Kenny- I hope you keep in touch even before your experiment is finished!
