Delay when in reverse and maybe in drive?

What this is really about is not a vehicle problem but how the driver gets into flow state when they're doing their driving job and how the gear shift indicator is interrupting that flow state. in other words:

Key Psychological Studies & Theories

1. Integral Affect & Time Perception
   
   • “It’s about time: How integral affect increases impatience” — This study (Laube & van den Bos) found that when people think about future rewards that evoke positive emotions, they perceive the waiting time as longer. That altered perception of future time makes them choose the smaller, sooner reward more often. PubMed+2mpib-berlin.mpg.de+2
     
     
   • This suggests that part of impatience comes not just from desire for the reward, but from how positively we feel about that reward, which warps our sense of temporal distance to getting it.
     
2. Subjective Time Salience
   
   • “A Watched Clock Never Ticks? The Role of Time Salience in Impatience” — In this set of studies, researchers looked at how aware people are of time passing (“time salience”) and how that correlates with impatience. They found that when people’s attention is strongly on the passage of time (e.g., when “the clock is ticking”), impatience is higher. eScholarship
     
     
   • Also, when time cues (like a visible clock) are less available, impatience gets amplified, because people are more focused on waiting itself.
     
3. Frustration & Time Slowing
   
   • “Increased Frustration Predicts the Experience of Time Slowing-down” (Tipples, 2018) — Using experience sampling, this study found that when people feel more frustrated, they report that time seems to drag (“time slowing-down”). Brill
     
     
   • This is quite relevant: if impatience includes frustration (or negative affect), it can literally distort your moment-to-moment perception of time, making things feel longer.
     
4. Patience as Emotion Regulation
   
   • “When Time Is the Enemy: An Initial Test of the Process Model of Patience” — This is more about the emotion of impatience/patience itself. The authors argue impatience is a distinct emotion and link it to how people regulate that feeling through time-perception-related processes. PubMed
     
     
   • Their model helps explain not just decision-making, but how people feel waiting, and why waiting can feel subjectively different depending on context and traits.
     
5. Changing Time & Emotions
   
   • A more conceptual/theoretical piece: “Changing time and emotions” (Geoffard & Luchini) argues that emotions shape how we experience time prospectively (i.e., when we imagine future events). For instance, positive future emotions (like joy) can make waiting feel like it stretches out, while negative emotions (like anxiety) can compress or warp that waiting time. PMC
     
     
   • This is useful for understanding why your internal sense of how long something takes might shift, even if the objective time doesn’t.
     
6. Impatience Over Time (Temporal Dynamics of Waiting)
   
   • “Impatience Over Time” (Roberts & Fishbach, 2023) — This recent work shows that impatience often increases as a waiting period draws toward its end. Even if you've already waited a long time, people typically feel more impatient as the end is near, driven by a “desire for closure.” Knowledge Center+1
     
     
   • This could tie into your experience: maybe when you're waiting for something simple (or routine), the perception of the remaining time stretches because you're more focused on “when will this be over?”
     
7. Memory & Time Perception in Decision-Making
   
   • “Memory shapes time perception and intertemporal choices” (Ortega & Tishby) — This more computational / theoretical paper argues that how we encode and compress memory (sensorimotor representation) affects how we subjectively experience time, which in turn affects how we make choices between “sooner-smaller” vs. “later-larger” rewards. arXiv
     
     
   • Their model suggests that perceived time dilation (or contraction) could come from the cognitive “coding” efficiency of our memory system, especially in decision contexts.
     

 

On our 2007 the MFD display can take a while to catch up with reality. Often when we come to a stop light we hear the ICE turn off, and those slight vibrations it causes stop, but the display still shows it putting out power for many seconds before it indicates that it is off. There have even been instances where the car just never seemed to notice that the ICE was off (as far as the display is concerned) but it would update to reflect that if the vehicle was allowed to roll a few inches forward and then stopped again. Also sometimes observed - the MFD shows the wheels turning after the car has fully stopped. Sometimes both together, the ICE is shown running, the wheels are turning, but in reality the ICE is off and the car is stationary.

The behavior that would be concerning on the OP's car would be if when parked on flat ground it is shifted P to D or R and then gas applied (or just brake removed) and it didn't immediately move in the designated direction when the dash display shows it in that mode. On a hill with significant grade the car might not move immediately in the desired direction because not enough accelerator depression was applied to make it move against the force of gravity.

Cars which have issues backing up a grade are not uncommon. Our 1998 Accord is a PITA to back up even a slight grade since the acceleration which results from pushing on the accelerator jumps too rapidly from none to "more than you wanted". It doesn't do that when pointed in the other direction. I vaguely recall that the 1st generation Prius also had some issue reversing up slopes, but have never owned one, so that's just hearsay.

 

And with Gen2 Prius which is limited to electric only in reverse I once had a problem in my fully loaded with stuff 2007 that refused to back up my sisters steep sloped entry into her garage and I kept having to try again with more speed. Finally, I unloaded the car and then it was fine.