I want my neighbour to help tow me out but just need some advice. How do I do this? Usually a car would go into neutral but I don’t have that option. Has anyone dealt with this?
Put it in drive and have your neighbour on his phone and when he taken the slack up just release the brake and lightly push the go pedalWe’ve managed to get our zs ev bogged on my front lawn
knock on all your neighbours get a few burley blokes stick the car in drive and push it just enough until the car takes over
Yes, but it's a "virtual" neutral, not a mechanical disconnect of the motor from the wheels. So my understanding is that the motor will spin with full magnetic field [ edit: but see about 5 posts down ], meaning that at a modest speed, it will generate enough voltage that it will charge the main battery via the IGBT free-wheeling diodes. The charge would be uncontrolled, so a very sudden high load above a certain speed. Even if the car isn't in ready mode, so the battery is disconnected, the motor as generator would generate voltages high enough to potentially damage the motor controller and other high voltage components. That's why a real tow has to be done with the drive wheels off the road.
It mentions 3mph max in the Gen 1 handbook.Yes, but it's a "virtual" neutral, not a mechanical disconnect of the motor from the wheels. So my understanding is that the motor will spin with full magnetic field, meaning that at a modest speed, it will generate enough voltage that it will charge the main battery via the IGBT free-wheeling diodes. The charge would be uncontrolled, so a very sudden high load above a certain speed. Even if the car isn't in ready mode, so the battery is disconnected, the motor as generator would generate voltages high enough to potentially damage the motor controller and other high voltage components. That's why a real tow has to be done with the drive wheels off the road.
I wonder if that means you have to use a tilt tray for an all wheel drive EV?
But at low speeds such as unbogging, the voltage generated would be less than the battery voltage, so that's not a problem. However, I suspect that spinning the motor at about 8x the wheel speed would make manual towing or pushing rather difficult.
Wow. That's really slow.
I interpret that as it can't be towed, only pushed, or pulled by a winch etc.
Thinking about what neutral means, I now think that may be wrong. If it's possible and safe to switch to neutral at high speed, that implies that the motor controller would be active and powering the windings at an angle that only generates field, i.e. targeting zero torque. So it would always generate just enough voltage to balance the battery voltage. Maybe a tiny bit more to cover losses, so the battery SoC doesn't actually go down. But if that's true, then it would be safe to tow at speed.
