[hw]

Cars break down all the time but at least they can be moved to the side of the road. Are Teslas not able to be moved once they run out of juice? They’re heavy and even with a few folks pushing from the back, is it able to disengage the parking brake?

[ndsipa_pomu]

From the fine article:

> The handbrakes of electric cars, and some other modern cars, are controlled electronically, unlike those of traditional petrol and diesel cars, which are mechanical. This means that the handbrake often locks when the power fails and the car cannot be pushed or towed.

This sounds like a major oversight by Tesla as there should be some override in case a vehicle breaks down in a dangerous position or is blocking something important.

[cle]

They can be towed, but it is correct that certain electrical failures can prevent the brakes from being released.

I know because this happened to me. The tow company sent a flat bed truck and used a winch to pull the car onto the platform.

It’s pretty annoying from a design perspective but it also seems like something that any competent tow company should be able to handle easily.

[eastbound]

Aren’t breaks disabled once the winch pulls on the hook point?

[HPsquared]

Not disabled, just overpowered. The winch can easily drag a car with locked up wheels. Very common in fact, e.g. automatic transmission that won't shift out of park, or handbrake malfunction, etc etc etc

[seanmcdirmid]

EVs can’t be towed with a winch style tow truck, at least without frying them. A flat bed tow truck is required (also recommended for many newer ICEs).

[kube-system]

That is an unhelpful quote. Yes, some cars have electronic parking brakes. It is quite common on new cars today. But they typically require being affirmatively commanded to change between their applied and unapplied states. Nothing about the general existence of electronic parking brakes explains why this particular vehicle would have one engaged mid-turn.

[krisoft]

> Nothing about the general existence of electronic parking brakes explains why this particular vehicle would have one engaged mid-turn.

Did you notice the part that it run out of battery mid-turn? It seems that the brakes are designed to fail safe in case of a battery failure. I see how someone could argue for that as a design choice. The fact that there is no way to emergency release them without power is more questionable.

[pulvinar]

Sorry, but it doesn't make sense why a Tesla would apply the parking brake when the big battery dies, since the separate 12V battery would power the brake mechanism. If that 12V also happened to die at the same moment (highly unlikely), the parking brake would have been stuck in the released position, not applied.

And 9 hours? They could have called one of those tow trucks who haul away an illegally parked vehicle in a matter of seconds.

[peteradio]

"Fail safe" is slamming on the brakes on a power failure? I heard a funny story about a guy who was used to chewing while driving and he'd open the door a crack to spit. Apparently some cars engage brakes if a door opens and he was driving his son's new Jeep going 50 mph.

[kube-system]

Other vehicles don't work this way. That's why it seems to be a strange design choice.

[ndsipa_pomu]

It seems the wrong choice to me as a handbrake can be emulated by shoving some bricks under the wheels, and a non-movable vehicle could cause serious issues for other people.

[fuzzbazz]

Other car models have handbrakes and/or can be left in a gear that locks the wheels.

They should have called a parking enforcement truck that carries rollers that attach to the locked wheels, they could have moved the car pretty quickly.

[zizee]

My diesel and my wife's petrol card both have electronic handbrakes. I'm not sure what would happen if either has a battery failure.

[MrFoof]

Most electronic handbrakes just push out a cam against the rotor. Most designs have a way to back the cam out with a wrench or tool.

However sometimes access can be ridiculous I believe BMW's release requires you digging around in the rear seating area for a socket to put a allen-key like shaft into to ultimately back it out. Some vehicles you'd have to jack up a corner to ultimately back it out.

It can vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer, so it's unlikely something a recovery service would know off-hand since in general a "stuck" parking brake (or automatic transmission parking pawl) is an edge case situation for them.

[kube-system]

If the power failed on most vehicles with electronic parking brakes while you were driving, you wouldn’t have the parking brake applied. And it would remain that way. As there wouldn’t be any power to rotate the mechanism into the applied position.

[MrFoof]

No, but a situation that happened right outside my home is someone too busy looking at their phone bashed their BMW 3-series into the curb and utility pole, and then decided to put the automatic transmission in park before they got out of the vehicle.

And when they got back in, they were unable to remove it from park and put it in neutral.

The previous model you would’ve apparently been able to remove some center console trim on the transmission tunnel and insert the key into a covered keyhole to release the parking pawl. On this newer generation? Jack the car up, get underneath, remove an access panel, and then use a wrench to back out the parking pawl. What a pain in the ass.

Normal turbocharged 4-popper, not a hybrid or a BEV. Once it was put in park after a crash, car decided it was game over.

It was ultimately dragged up onto a flatbed, probably partially flatspotting the tires in the process. The guy sent by AAA had no intention (or the equipment) to safely jack up the car on a busy street to remove the pawl, and probably didn’t even want to even if he knew what to do.

[Saris]

You can still tow it even with the handbrake on, just drag it.

[wesleyd]

My understanding is that many/most modern cars [0] have an electronic parking brake, and soon enough all of them will.

Of course, a headline such as “car with electronic handbrake breaks down mid-turn…” wouldn’t have had the same clickability. I’m shocked - shocked! - to find a “news” organization sacrificing truth for outrage!

[0] E-handbrakes aren’t a great fit to a manual transmission (or are they?) but I suspect the days of manual transmissions are numbered: electric cars no more need a manual transmission than they need a buggy whip.

[simondotau]

On the other hand there are also numerous premium ICE cars which, if they break down in a specific way, can’t be placed into neutral without appropriate tools. This isn’t a new EV thing.

[whalesalad]

California CHP would have pushed it off the road with the bull bar.