Shifter, "D" should be forward motion and "R" should be backward motion

I'm with you on this one. My Jeep had a three speed floor shift. My Honda CRX had a five with an entirely different pattern. I went back and forth without issue.

Gnome used to have the window buttons on the right side, now they are on the left. It took about three days to get used to it.

Standards are nice, but some flexibility is needed if one is to get through life.

Tom

 

I wasn't around when they tried the experiment, or somehow missed it. Those plymouth buttons from the 50s just weren't right. IMHO a rocker switch foward top down (Forward), reverse bottom down (Reverse), neutral is neutral, park is pressed to release the toggle out. The park button, start button, and then joy stick seems like a poor interface. So instead of park we hit the start switch to turn it off. Its not a huge deal, but ergonomically I give it a 2 on a scale of 1-10.

But they did reinvent the shifter with 2 buttons (Park and Start) and a joy stick. I'm surprised other keyboards are not available now that alternatives are cheap to build. We no longer need to design them so that mechanical keys won't jam.

 

Push-button shifters came out in 1956 on some Chrysler products and the last of them were off the market by 1965. I didn't realize they lasted that long. A big advantage to a lever or joystick is you can just grab it with your front paw and move it in the necessary direction without looking. Push buttons require much finer motor control.

You already have a other keyboard options. They are built into Windows and Mac OS and are just a software option selection away.

The most common alternate keyboard arrangement, Dvorak is available in hardware if you insist on your key markings being the same as the letters you get when you type.

 

There is probably not one automobile from a major car manufacturer in the world that designs their floor-mounted automatic transmission shifter with 'D' toward the front and 'P' or 'R' to the back.
OK, that may be intuitive but Toyota MUST maintain industry standards. Imagine the lawsuits.... new drivers. rental vehicles. stupid people. Unintended Drive or Reverse.

Also, if Toyota would have designed pushbutton transmission selection for the Prius, sure may have impacted sales and unleashed critics. "golf cart"?

So perhaps we can stop slamming Toyota.
Next thing you know some folks will complain about having the steering wheel on the left side. wait... I take that back.

 

I agree 100% the shifter D and R should be reversed. This is a different car, and designed with foward thinking right? Well it makes sense push foward to go foward and push back to go back. I got caught a couple times parked doing opposite. Now I make sure I look twice in making sure I shifted correctly.

 

For those that do not like the D and R positions, this is drive-by-wire technology, so try swapping the wires

 

You cant really call push forward for forward, pull backward for backward, thinking outside the box.

You dont see how it would cause problems being opposite of every other car in production?

A change and a good idea do not go hand in hand.

Electrochromic glass all around sounds like a great way to build in automatic sunshades... until it malfunctions while your driving

 

It is not just an Industry standard
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2002/octqtr/pdf/49cfr571.102.pdf

 

OK, I read it to see if there was something that I could learn. There was, in automatics without park (prius) the gear position must be displayed to the driver whenever the car can move (ready state), and neutral must be between Forward and Reverse.

Since it is not a column shifter it says nothing about relative position of Forward and reverse other than neutral must be inbetween. Even if you were to take the convention stated that neutral to forward is clockwise, Left (9:00)is Neutral, down(6:00) is Forward, that is counter clockwise. Luckily or unluckily since it is not a column shifter this part of the reg can be ignored. Since the shifter does not stay in position its not really counter clockwise.

Not a big deal, but the regulation does not say to design it backwards, it just allows toyota to do it the way they did.

 

I wondered about the self start a couple of weeks ago, so I checked. Toyota applied for and received a special dispensation to cover the self starting feature. I lost the link to the dispensation but it has been incorporated in the latest version of CFR 49 571.102 at S3.1.3.1
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations:

It looks like they comply with the spirit of the reg by having a ccw movement to engage R and a cw movement to engage D as viewed from the drivers seat. Right off hand, I think all other AT cars do it that way too.

 

It also says thy have to put P near the R end. (If they have a P)

So they are allowed

P
R
N
D

or

D
N
R
P


And frankly 99% of us are used to PRND not DNRP.

 

cool

No its actually the oposite of the convention. R(12:00), N(9:00),D(F)(6:00). All counter clockwise. This is a new device though, no normal shifter goes back to the centered position, neutral between forward and reverse is done electronically. If you shift from one to the other while moving it will move you to neutral instead. Since it is not a column based shifter it does not need to follow the clockwise direction according to the regulation.

Yes if P was on the shifter the convention would be on top and Reverse would be pulled back from P. This would make it feel like it followed convention. But P is not on the shifter, so the regulation and convention says nothing about where it should be. A car does not even need to have a parking gear, which is a good thing as manual transmissions don't, at least none that I've driven. A self centering joystick shifter with a button for park is a new model so it is free to set its own conventions. I would have prefered a shifter that included Park on it, but really I'm used to one I have, and its all pretty academic.

until the next thread......

 

I agree
I still sometimes make a mistake till I hear the beep

 

I get it, you'd like the shifter to work opposite of the way it does.
I like it the way it is

 

"If the transmission shift lever sequence includes a park position, it shall be located at the end, adjacent to the reverse drive position."

They are allowed not to have Park, but the spirit of this law is that if they have one, it is next to Reverse and that it be one end of the pattern.

 

I very rarely press the P
I just shot down th car and the Pri does it itself