Upside Down Tesla on Stagecoach Wheels Proves How Electricity Beats Gasoline

We know him by his cyber-name of WhistlinDiesel, and by his utterly daring – some use other words, many of those expletives – stunts with, for, against, and by all things automotive. Mostly cars, but airplanes, motorcycles, boats, or heavy equipment also star in his popular YouTube videos.

The latest deed from the quirky act patron is driving a Tesla Model 3 through several non-automobile contrived challenges. Up to a point, the videos are visibly scripted, staged, faked, or whatever other designation best fits the "what in the name of transportation is this" reaction.

But there is a method (very well) hidden in the madness – and it is instead an acquired taste. After all, watching an expensive car being thrashed (and trashed) for no reason other than garnering views, likes, and shares would be nonsensical – or worse.

Still, one can learn a lesson or two (or more, if one pays close attention) from these addictively entertaining episodes of pure March rabbit enthusiasm. Although some of the YouTuber's antics are simply perpetrated for the sheer fun of it.


The Tesla in this story is a mundane small sedan, not some dragstrip blitzing Plaid or record-setting performance one-off. An off-the-shelf everyday use automobile with electrons running around in the battery pack to spin the wheels toward a cleaner future (or so they say, anyway).

We got to the bottom of this conundrum: Cody Detwiler (the civilian, real-world name of the WhistlinDiesel host and main star) takes the Model 3 to a gravity challenge. Flipping the tables on science (and the car upside down), the social media wrangler wants to prove that a Tesla (and, by extension, any electric vehicle) will run and drive upside down just as fine as it does upside up.

Sceptics will argue that doing this in a car that runs on lightning bolts is far easier than in a fossil-fuel burner. Agreed, science demonstrated that gravity and electricity don't share a tight bond, as opposed to flammable liquids, that obey the downward flow pattern.

But regardless of how indifferent a Tesla might be to gravity – strictly when considering the working principle of its drivetrain! – it still declares that wheels are the best means of contact-impeded motion. And, to the best of anyone's knowledge, Elon Musk has fitted his automobiles with four wheels on the bottom side.

Flipping a Model 3 upside down requires a bit of ingenuity, out-of-the-box thinking, and practical execution (pun intended). One solution would be to install a secondary drivetrain on the car's roof. Another would be to return to the roots of travel from the days of Honest Abe Lincoln, right about to the epoch of stagecoaches.

Remember those massive wheels with many spikes, a wooden construction, and a two-inch-thin (five centimeters) track? Well, Cody Detwiler remembered, and that's precisely what he went for. Ditching the factory-installed Tesla Model 3 wheels, fabricating 115-inch-tall (2.92 meters) steel ones, and driving on them is mechanically challenging, but allergically captivating to watch.

Why so tall? So they could accommodate the car in any position relative to the ground – floor down or not. And, as the video demonstrates, it works (if you agree that "works" means the Tesla can still move about on its own power).

In true WhistlinDiesel fashion, the test concluded in a rather destructive-educative manner. While the Tesla Model 3 proved that its energy source doesn't bow to gravity, the rest of the car is still bound by the laws of physics. So much so that it downhill-drove its wheels off under the influence of the Force. The force of gravitational attraction, to be specific.