https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/autos-technology-gear-shifter-design-tesla-44d79694
Sean O’Malley has driven hundreds of cars during his nearly four-decade career as a vehicle tester. But one day a couple of years ago he found himself in the seat of a Hyundai at a loss over how to get the car to move.
O’Malley, senior test coordinator at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and his colleagues couldn’t find the gear shifter in the Ioniq 5 sport-utility vehicle. One of them finally spotted it tucked away behind the car’s steering wheel.
“It was definitely not obvious where it was,” O’Malley said.
Car shoppers, car renters and valets feel O’Malley’s pain. A proliferation of electronic controls have allowed car engineers to largely ditch the mechanical connections between the gear lever and the transmission. Disappearing are the familiar, bulky shifters typically mounted on the steering column or center console.
“Once you eliminate that mechanical linkage, then anything goes,” said Paul Snyder, a former Ford designer who’s now chair of the College for Creative Studies’ transportation design program.
A BIG PITA for old fogeys like me.
I am sure such “innovative” designs are liked by the younger crowd.
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I remember a car with a push-button shifter on the dashboard (not on floor or column). Never did like it.
Mine’s an Ioniq 6, all electric. Shift stalk on the wheel column. Two choices: rotate forward, go forward. Rotate backwards, go backwards.
Oops, I lied. Push button on the end of the stalk: Park.
Not so hard to master, really.
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The difference between Mac and Windoze is that Apple enforced a standard user interface and Microsoft didn’t.
Imagine a piano with the keys tuned at random, the black keys on one side and the white ones on the other. Muscle memory goes to pot.
The Captain
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Automakers got it into their heads that people want their cars to work like their phones, so they pile everything onto the screen. So, to do much of anything, you need to poke and swipe your way through menus to get to what you used to be able to do with the poke of a single button.
Once upon a time Microsoft thought people wanted their PCs to work like their phone, and gave us Windows 8. Remember how fast that thing went away, and they returned to a traditional Windows GUI with Win 10?
Seems a few automakers are catching on too.
Steve
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No, I don’t think that is why. I think the manufacturers realized that moving stuff to the touch screen means no mechanical buttons, that are expensive when rated for thousands of actuations over a decade or more of time, and can still break. And require wiring harnesses and connectors. Its a cost and reliability thing.
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That is a possibility too. But, when a screen fails, it costs a lot more than a button. CR has reported the thing people gripe about, more than anything else, is the gimmicky screens that fail, and/or have lousy software that doesn’t work worth a hoot, even if the screen has not failed.
Steve
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By definition, any/all screens fail because there is no relationship to control of a cell phone to control of a car.
Your cell phone does not drive at high speed on a highway when you are using it at home, school, cafe, etc. So the fundamental analogy of “a screen is a screen” is flawed at the premise. Passengers using screens–fine. They are NOT driving the vehicle.
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There’s a word that comes to mind, “*ensh-tification.” When too many unnecessary and unreliable or even confounding features are added, the thing becomes ensh-tified.
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Mastering isn’t the point of the OP. Knowing what to do upon first entering an unfamiliar vehicle is.
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