I'd need to do some quick math to double-check but very rough ballpark estimates still make me think Teslas can be pushed by a single person. After all, a single strongman can pull a passenger airliner, and any car is nearly impossible to push uphill -- you have to really get some momentum built up first to let them coast up driveways/etc.

It's not about weight or incline, it's the mechanical gearing in the "transmission" that can't turn the wheels without 100 percent power from the engine. You'll be able to push it and think it's really heavy, but it's just the transmission fighting you.

standards and automatic trans have neutral that disconnects driveshaft from engine, removing any resistance from the engaged gear. Most EVs either don't have neutral or a poor implementation of it, because of single gear transmission/direct drive.

> Most EVs either don't have neutral or a poor implementation of it,

I'm sorry, do you mean that neutral and "car wash/freeroll mode" are not 100% equivalent?

This really confounds me... if my car has a problem while driving down the road, I'd really like to have a chance of pushing it onto the shoulder if necessary.

A car that you can't do this with sounds very poorly designed to me.

They aren’t equivalent. Most EVs have a free roll mode, where you can push the car or take it through a car wash. You are still spinning the electric motors though.

This is fine for low speeds and short distances but is not advised for towing, like with tow trucks that leave two of the car’s wheels on the ground.

> Unless it's downhill.

Wouldn't that be ok since the parent's root problem was no cell-phone signal?

Edit: of course walking is an option too :-)

>To make matters worse I was in a mountain valley and had no phone signal

I read the above as an indication that they were in a valley where mountains were blocking any chance of a signal. Going further "downhill" wouldn't help in that case.

Fair enough, I was thinking back to the time something similar happened to me "mid-mountain".

This Tesla must've been in one heck of a stop where "hiking wasn’t an option as it was pretty hot and we had no water", lol. Does Tesla make a motocross bike?

Lack of cell signal is still a problem in some parts of the U.S. I can think of a few places within a couple hundred miles where I can drive 45 minutes or so without any signal. It's also an area where triple digit temperatures are common in the summer.

You can push a tesla in most typical push situations. Sure its heavy, but its in the ballpark of pushing any large sedan or SUV, not just electric ones. You can enable free-rolling wheels in the car and push away, especially if you have luxury of two people pushing.

The weight of a Tesla is not some unprecedented figure for a passenger car - a model 3 is no heavier than many BMW 5 series configurations etc.

The far bigger problem for pushing EVs in my experience is blown pyro-fuses that lock the axle after crashes preventing the wheels from turning - a common issue after an EV shunt. This is why you will often see EVs "dragged" out of shunts by the recovery vehicle until they can get the locked wheels onto dollies. This is only an issue if the EV being pushed has been in an impact generally, but the bar for a pyrofuse blow seems to be low too - it will trip even if airbags haven't deployed. The wheels on many EV motor axles wont turn again until the pyrofuse is replaced.

> You can enable free-roling wheels in the car and push away

This was mentioned a little earlier and further down in the comment tree but many thanks to you too for clearing this up.

I'm racking my brain on this. Why is this not just called exactly what it is, "Neutral"?

I just read about this feature which is advertised purely for car washes, and can be gotten into with a wierd combination of actions or "putting the car into neutral".

Is it...not just going into neutral via disconecting a drive shaft?

> Is it...not just going into neutral via disconnecting a drive shaft?

Conceptually you are correct its like neutral, but almost no EV from any manufacturer has disconnecting drive shafts. Every Tesla model except the original roadster is locked in a single gear transmission that never disconnects - one of the big reasons EV drivetrains can be built so reliable with virtually no maintenance requirements (there is no service items on most EV drivetrains until a quick coolant flush in ~10th year of car's life span).

The Model 3/Y just dump the output of the rotor into a permanently locked 9:1 trans. There is no need for a reverse gear either as unlike a gas engine the electric motor can easily rotate in both directions.

An electric motor cant "stall" like a gas engine and generally never has to change gear, so there is usually no real benefit to fitting the cost and complexity of clutching driveshafts you typically need when you have a gearbox or gas engine.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but to best of my memory the only "mainstream" EV with a gearbox on sale today is the Porche Taycan/Audi E-Tron GT (they are both the same chasis/drivetrain underneath) with its pretty unusual 2-speed setup. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next generation of that car eliminates the gearbox.

If the drivetrain never disengages, how does “freewheeling mode” (neutral) work? Spinning the wheels manually makes them a generator, and that causes resistance from the magnetic flux (hence regenerative braking). How do cars disable that?

It disconnects the excitation current.

> Is it...not just going into neutral via disconecting a drive shaft?

Very good point and although IDK how it's done I completely agree with you regarding the terminology. In other words, I don't see new internal combustion cars renaming neutral to be "car wash mode"... lol.

Cars should have neutral. And, if yours does then it should be named as such.

Making sure I've got "car was mode" is not what I want to do when I'm in the market for a new car. Nor do I want to start reading through the owners manual should I have to push my car onto the shoulder of the road in an emergency.

Perhaps my age and crotchety grumpiness is starting to show.

> You can enable free-roling wheels in the car and push away

Is that possible when the car is persumed dead? Or why would you be trying to push it otherwise? If you can enable free-rolling wheels, why not just drive away?

Right - pyrofuse blow has prevented this in my experience. That's why I've specifically called out shunts. If there is no impact, you would be pretty unlucky to not be able to do it.