The short version: a Tesla goes on a flatbed, all four wheels off the ground, every time. Not a dolly, not a wheel-lift, not "just a couple of miles to the shop." Tesla says so in the owner's manual, and the reason is mechanical rather than legal — you can genuinely damage the car by moving it the wrong way.
Orange County is thick with EVs. Between the Irvine tech corridor, the Newport and Laguna coast, and a Tesla store or delivery center in easy reach of most of the county, a meaningful share of what comes off our decks now is electric. We have flatbedded everything from a Model 3 with a dead 12V in a Costa Mesa parking structure to a Cybertruck. Here is what actually matters when one of them stops moving.
Why an EV Can't Be Towed on Its Wheels
On a combustion car, putting the transmission in neutral disconnects the engine from the wheels. That is what makes a wheel-lift tow safe: the drive wheels can spin freely without turning anything they should not.
An electric car has no equivalent. The motor is geared directly to the wheels through a fixed-ratio reduction gearbox with no neutral that mechanically disconnects it. Roll the drive wheels and you are turning the motor. Turn the motor and it acts as a generator, pushing current back into a system that is not expecting it while the car is shut down. Do that for long enough and you are looking at damage to components that cost more than most tows do in a year.
Tesla's manual states it plainly: transport the vehicle with all four tires off the ground. There is a narrow emergency exception for moving the car a very short distance at walking pace, and it is not a license to tow it to a shop.
The dolly question comes up constantly, so: no. A dolly lifts two wheels and leaves two rolling. On an all-wheel-drive Tesla that is the exact failure mode you are trying to avoid, and on a rear-wheel-drive one you are still dragging a motor. It also does not play well with the low front air dam. There is no version of this where a dolly is the right call.
Transport Mode: What It Is and Why It Matters
Tesla parking brakes are electric, and they default to clamped. A powered-down Tesla will not roll, which means it will not winch onto a deck. Transport Mode is the setting that releases them.
On most models you get there through Controls → Service → Towing, then enable Transport Mode. The car will typically warn you that it must not be driven and that it can only be moved on a flatbed — which is the point.
Two practical things about it that catch people out:
- It needs 12V power. Transport Mode lives on the touchscreen, and the touchscreen runs off the low-voltage system. No 12V, no Transport Mode. This is why a dead 12V battery is a bigger problem on an EV than most owners expect.
- It times out. Leave the car sitting in Transport Mode and it will drop back out on its own after a period of inactivity, re-clamping the brakes. So it gets switched on when the winch line is already attached, not twenty minutes earlier while you wait for the truck.
If you are the owner and you are able to, enabling it when the driver asks saves everyone time. If you cannot — car is dead, you are not on scene, you do not have the app — that is a normal situation and a driver who does EVs regularly will handle it.
When the Car Is Completely Dead
This is the call we get most often, and it is almost always the same story: the 12V battery has failed, and now the car will not unlock, the screen is black, and nothing responds. The traction battery may be at 80% and it does not help at all — on an EV the little 12V battery is what wakes everything else up.
It usually happens in the worst possible place: a garage, a parking structure, an assigned space with cars either side. The car cannot be opened, cannot be put in Transport Mode, and cannot roll.
What a properly equipped driver does about it:
- Get 12V power to the car externally. Recent Teslas have jump points behind an access panel in the front bumper — a small cover pops off to expose positive and negative leads. Power there is enough to release the door latches and bring the screen up.
- Open it, enable Transport Mode. Once the car has low-voltage power, the normal procedure applies.
- Fit the tow eye. It lives in the frunk on most models and threads into a receiver behind a pop-out cover in the front bumper. That is a structural anchor designed for exactly this load. Winching off a control arm or a subframe edge instead is how cars end up bent, and I have seen the results.
- Winch it flat onto the deck. Low-angle approach, soft straps at the wheels rather than chains at the chassis.
If the 12V has failed rather than simply discharged, a jump gets the car onto the truck but will not fix it — plan on the destination being a service center.
Parking Structures: The Orange County Special
A specific problem worth calling out, because in this county it comes up weekly. Most OC parking structures — South Coast Plaza, Fashion Island, the Irvine Spectrum decks, the office towers along Jamboree and MacArthur — have clearance bars around 6'8". A flatbed does not fit under that. Ever.
So an EV that dies on level three has to be winched or rolled out to somewhere a flatbed can reach, and that requires Transport Mode, a car that steers, and a driver willing to do it properly. It is slower than a surface-street job and it is worth mentioning when you call so we send the right truck and the right person.
Out of Charge on the Road
Running an EV to zero is different from running a gas car dry, because there is no equivalent of a two-gallon can. Mobile charging exists in some markets but it is slow, and a roadside top-up that takes an hour to give you twenty miles is rarely the right answer when you are stopped on the 405.
In practice the fix is a flatbed to the nearest Supercharger or fast charger, or to your home charger if you are close. Around here that usually means a run to one of the Supercharger sites along the 5 or the 405 corridor. Same rules apply on the way — four wheels up.
One thing worth knowing: an EV taken to zero and left there for a long stretch can deplete the 12V system too, at which point you have both problems at once. If the car warns you it is very low, plan the stop rather than pushing for one more exit.
Cybertruck and the Heavier EVs
We have had a Cybertruck on the deck, and the honest note is that weight is the constraint. A Cybertruck runs well over 6,000 lb, a Rivian R1T is in similar territory, and a Hummer EV is heavier still. That is a lot of vehicle for a light-duty flatbed, and it changes which truck we send rather than whether we can do it. Same principle for the big electric SUVs.
If you drive one, say so when you call. It is not a difficult job, but it is not a job you want a truck showing up under-specced for.
What to Tell the Dispatcher
Five things, and the call gets a lot shorter:
- Make and model — "Model Y" tells us the truck, the ramps and the procedure in one word
- Whether the car has 12V power — does the screen come on, do the doors unlock
- Whether it rolls and steers — any crash damage, any flat tires
- Exactly where it is — and if it is in a structure, which level and whether there is a clearance bar
- Where it is going — service center, home charger, body shop
Damage I've Seen From Doing It Wrong
Not hypotheticals. Cars that came to us after somebody else had a go:
- A Model 3 dragged a short distance on its rear wheels by a wheel-lift operator who said it would be fine. It was not fine, and the diagnosis was not cheap.
- A Model S winched by a strap looped around a front control arm because the driver could not find the tow eye. Bent arm, ruined alignment, a bill that dwarfed the tow.
- A Model Y with a cracked front fascia from a steep approach angle on a deck with no low-angle ramps — the same mistake people make with lowered sports cars.
The common thread is not malice. It is a driver who tows twenty combustion cars a week and one EV a month, applying the habits that work on the other twenty.
The Bottom Line
Flatbed, four wheels off the ground, no exceptions. Transport Mode to release the parking brakes, which means the car needs 12V power to cooperate. Tow eye in the frunk, threaded into the front bumper receiver, because that is what the winch should pull on. And if the car is dead in a parking structure, say so on the phone so the right truck comes the first time.
We do this every week across Orange County — see EV & Tesla towing for what we carry, or just call (657) 527-4061 and tell us what you are driving.