I don’t think anybody wants 12 buttons on the dash of their new car as gear selector.
Most cars today have only P, N, D, and perhaps 1 through 5. To me eight (or even 12) buttons on the dash are better than the console space taken up by the typical console shifter. But, as I implied, it’s only an expression of an option that modern technology has made possible in a reliable way, and it would be easy with today’s technology to offer a console shifter as an option. It could even be dealer-installed, perhaps a shifter system that can be installed in the console and plugs into the electrical receptacle that the buttons would plug into. I believe that people who prefer shifters should be able to get them, and suggesting a method by which they might cost-effectively be offered as a dealer installed option. Pushbuttons might even be less expensive, although with today’s economies of scale perhaps not by much.
In all honesty, I commonly use my shifter and would probably opt for one. I’ve driven manuals most of my life, and perhaps that’s where my preference comes from.
Manufactures have been using rotary gear selectors in some vehicles for a few years however most people buying a common mainstream car would reject something unfamiliar. A rotary gear selector is more practical than a cluster of push buttons like an old push button telephone.
A shift lever takes less focus when parking than push buttons. Toyota’s hybrids have a park button on the dash, no park position on the joy stick. Park is automatically set when the engine is switched off but if you want to exit the car for a moment you must push the button and verify the engagement.
BTW, people also want an “R” on their gear selector.
If I remember right, my 61 Corvair had a shift lever on the dash. Both my cars now have the floor shift and then the paddle shifters if you want to go manual. Seems to work fine except in the Pontiac you are either in manual or automatic mode. It’ll downshift but not upshift until you push the lever. On the Acura though you can paddle up or down the gears but it won’t stay in that gear and just acts like a normal automatic by up-shifting again right away. Not sure what the benefit of that is. I think I’m off topic a little.
Allison transmissions have offered pushbutton for quite some time, on their larger units
I’m talking about the 3000 series, as an example
Definitely!
Most of us can shift from Park to Drive, or from Drive to a lower gear without looking.
I always wince when I see people driving a car that they have owned for perhaps as long as a decade, but they still need to peer intently at the shift quadrant in order to figure out how to move from one gear to another. I have actually seen people move the shift lever…slooooowly…one notch at a time, in order to move from Park to Drive.
Let’s see…if I move it one notch, I am in…reverse!
I think I’ll study the lever for another few seconds before I figure out how to move it from reverse to neutral. Now, I’ll take a little rest while I figure out how to shift from neutral to drive
In aircraft, buttons and knobs are each designed with a different feel so that the pilot can tell what he’s grabbing by feel while concentrating on multiple things, and such that he can tell automatically when he’s grabbed the wrong knob. The feel of the different knobs quickly becomes engrained in their minds, and it works. Feel and location, combined with good lit indicators on the dash, could easily make using pushbutton shifters automatic enough for parking… where selections aren’t made under speed.
Nothing about driving a car is natural. It’s all learned. Including shifting of automatics. In the early days, before any common arrangement developed, car controls weren’t even close to what they’ve morphed into. Shifters eventually went to “three on the tree” to column mounted stalks, to console mounted shifters and now to rotating selectors. I believe people would have no problem adapting to pushbuttons. Those who had them in the early days didn’t, including my HS buddy in the late '60s with his pushbutton Dodge.
It’s only opinion, but I think pushbuttons on the dash, freeing up console space, are a great idea.
Then there is Jeep that came up with a shifter that was the worst of all.
There’s something to be said for the physical sense you get moving a lever to a known position. Asking people to use the Jeep shifter that was sort of a ratchet, like a motorcycle shifter, makes then have to either see a small lighted letter on the shift handle (that’s covered by their own hand) or a read out on the dash. I’m convinced by my experience with the public that a lot of people can’t see close well enough to read without putting on reading glasses. So they don’t use little lights or read outs on the dash, they do it by feel. They may not be able to read or understand lots of things on a modern dash, and they drive until a bright red light goes on.
That Jeep shifter was the perfectly wrong combination of similar, but different. Looked like a regular shifter, but didn’t act like one. Make it a rotary knob and everyone knows it’s different, and pays attention.
There is a fine line between change for progress and change for the sake of change. Perhaps the pushbuttons came about to encourage people not to try to shift an automatic transmission. With the early Buick Dynaflow automatic transmissions and the 1950-52 Chevrolet PowerGlide transmissions, the car started in direct drive and depended completely on the torque converter unless low was selected. Mant drivers of these Buicks and Chevrolets started off in low and then shifted into Drive about 25 mph to get reasonable acceleration from a stop. The original Ford and Mercury automatic transmissions started in 2nd gear when the car was in Drive. If one wanted good performance from a stop, one had to put the transmission in Low. Chrysler’s auto transmissions always started in low and there was no need to shift Chrysler’s automatic transmission.
Maybe now’s not the time to pressure the car companies to develop a new air bag . .
Since they’re so hell bent on keeping us from putting a passenger in the middle of the front seat again.
BUT
if they’d put a center passenger air bag there and remove those silly consoles ?
IF
they had built my Expedition like its pickup brother ,with a column shifter, buttons, or knobs . . .
it would seat NINE and we wouldn’t need to take two vehicles when visiting my daughter and grand kids.
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