How does a car stay still when the engine is on in park?

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Title.

When a car has its engine on, the engine is working. But if its in park, the car doesn’t move. How? The engine is still running like if the car was driving, but what mechanism prevents the car from moving?

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18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

On a manual car you have to either press the clutch, which physically disconnects the engine from the gears, or shift into neutral, which also disconnects the wheels from the engine.

Automatic cars generally have a hydraulic coupling, so the engine spins a turbine that makes a bunch of liquid go around, and then a second turbine is spun up by that moving liquid, and turns the wheels, but because it’s a liquid, you can just fix the wheels, so they can’t turn, and the first turbine can still just spin freely in the liquid. Imagine holding one of those small windmills under a flowing tap, if you let it turn freely, it spins really fast, but you can also just hold on to it so it can’t move, and the water can just flow around it

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