Electric cars are "drive by wire" much more than conventional gas cars. On a mechanical transmission, shifting to neutral would disconnect the engine from the

Electric cars are "drive by wire" much more than conventional gas cars. On a mechanical transmission, shifting to neutral would disconnect the engine from the wheels. Even on some automatic transmissions with physical shifting cables/linkages, shifting to neutral would achieve the same thing. Besides the transmission, most older/lower-end cars without keyless ignition have the ignition switch physically disconnect power to the engine management electronics, which a gas engine needs to keep operating. Gas cars are unfortunately also moving away from the above (some automatic transmissions are fully shift-by-wire, and ignition switches no longer do any electrical switching), but enough of the past persists that generally you'd at least still have one of those. Fully electric cars have none of that legacy baggage. This is good for many reasons, but unfortunately they seem to have forgotten the cardinal rule of any heavy machinery - a big fat "emergency stop" button that physically disconnects power to all actuators. I guess regulation hasn't caught up yet, because until very recently it just wasn't required since the ignition switch fulfilled the same purpose.