I recently learned that my Nissan electric vehicle locks all four wheels—a feature likely built into most, if not all, electric vehicles by design when the auxiliary battery goes below a certain voltage.

While in general, this is a good safety feature, it does have real dangers. Causing the wheels to turn in this condition can cause a fire. It has happened.

This makes it difficult if not impossible to move the car without getting the wheels off the ground. So, imagine yourself stranded in the middle of an intersection waiting for, perhaps, a heavy duty forklift. You can’t just push it out of the way of traffic and others might not believe you.

In my case, I found out when I called a tow truck to fetch my locked up car from under my car port. Fortunately, the operator did not need to learn on my car. He already had heard of an actual occurrence. He saved my house from the flames of my burning EV. As he told me about it, it sparked, visions in my imagination of everything I have up in ten minutes.

This needs to be treated as a potential danger. Something should be required to fix it. At the very least, it needs to be made very public. All those buying EVs should be notified in writing as well as emergency personnel. I would hope all tow truck operators already know.

As an aside, one thing that really irked me, I couldn’t open the trunk, where my wife’s wheel chair was. Imagine if there was something really important back there. As important as the wheelchair is, some things carried in trunks are far more important.

There needs to be a manual emergency release on all trunks by law. This should apply to gas powered cars as well.