It’s Absurd How Difficult It Is To Put Some New Cars Into Neutral When They Break

Inevitably, on a long enough timeline, any car will go seriously wrong. If a car really, properly breaks down, it helps to put it in neutral and get it out of the way. Sounds easy enough, but these days, it’s a little more difficult than it used to be if you have an electronic shifter.

You know how you have to put your foot on the brake before you can shift an automatic car out of park? Not only does this function prevent cars from rolling away while parked with a simple bump of the shifter, but a shift lock solenoid is also required by federal law. As per NHTSA:

Each motor vehicle manufactured on or after September 1, 2010 with a GVWR of 4,536 Kilograms (10,000 pounds) or less with an automatic transmission that includes a “park” position shall be equipped with a system that requires the service brake to be depressed before the transmission can be shifted out of “park”. This system shall function in any starting system key position in which the transmission can be shifted out of “park”. This section does not apply to trailers or motorcycles.

This shifter interlock function is well-intentioned and historically easy to work with. When a car dies on the side of the road or in a parking garage with no hope of hooking up a jump box for ignition power, overriding this safety function has usually been fairly easy, but circumvention of it for the purposes of moving a broken car has been complicated by electronic shifters.

In the past, automatic transmission gear selectors were connected by a cable, which was connected to the transmission. By simply popping an easily accessible release usually located near the shifter with your key, the shift lock solenoid would release, the gear selector would move and let a driver put a dead car in neutral so it could be pushed out of the way. However, electronic shifters are only connected to transmissions using wires, which means automakers have needed to get creative with emergency shifter lock releases.

The 2019 to 2023 Porsche Cayenne features one of the better examples. As Assistance Services Group highlights in a handy PDF, Porsche includes a special tool in the vehicle that can be inserted into a slot in the floor and then turned 90 degrees. It’s a touch more involved than pulling a tab near the shifter and pressing a button, but it’s easy enough.

On the old Jaguar XF, one of the first cars with a rotary-style shifter, you had to pry off an unlabeled access panel just ahead of the cup holders, twist a release, and then pull a red strap. The car would then go into neutral, and the crazy part is, that’s the easiest Jaguar Land Rover has ever made it with this shifter. Mid-2010s Range Rovers had the emergency release under the cup holder, and that just isn’t an intuitive place at all.

So far, we’ve covered electronic shifters with obfuscated emergency shift releases in an unintuitive way – but at least they didn’t require workshop tools. Enter the Lincoln Aviator, which makes you use a tool that isn’t included in the vehicle to put it in neutral in an emergency. Most tow truck drivers probably have a small flathead screwdriver on their rigs among other tools, but I bet most Aviator owners don’t.

Oh, but it gets worse. F82 BMW M4 and F80 BMW M3 owners who didn’t opt for the row-your-own option don’t have a shift lock override inside the cabin. Instead, you’ll need to jack the car up, crawl underneath, remove a Torx bolt from the side of the transmission, and cable-tie the gear selector shaft into the neutral position. Needless to say, this is absolutely insane, and enough to cause some head scratching for those who work on vehicles for a living.

Those who drive cars with manual gearboxes are likely feeling a bit smug right now, but here’s the thing: Occasionally, people require rental cars, and things can still go wrong on rental cars with fancy electronic shifters. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to easily put a dead car into neutral and push it, but automakers seem intent on making things more difficult than they need to be.

(Photo credits: BMW, Assistance Services Group, Reddit)

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