Once a conventional mechanical linkage was no longer necessary, designers gained considerable freedom. A rotary dial could perform the same electric vehicles accelerating the transformation.
Most battery-electric vehicles don’t use conventional multi-gear transmissions. Their electric motors can deliver useful torque across a broad operating range, allowing many EVs to operate with a single fixed reduction gear rather than the multiple forward ratios common in gasoline-powered vehicles.
Drivers still need to select Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive, but there is less reason to retain a traditional transmission selector designed around a conventional automatic gearbox.
Add in that many EVs have been just experimental smartphones with wheels, and things get even dicier. Early adopters of a new technology are usually happy to accept all kinds of radical changes and inconveniences for the privilege of being first. And so gear shifters got radicalized in electric cars.
Some EVs use steering-column stalks. Others employ center-console switches, small toggles, or touchscreen controls. The absence of a conventional transmission also gives designers more freedom when arranging the cabin. Things could be sleeker, thinner, lower, and above all.. Whiter. Every early EV seemed to have a white interior with a complete absence of useful buttons or switches. Giant TV-sized screens dominated the interior instead.
However, electrification doesn’t automatically justify every unusual design. An EV still needs a clear, accessible way to select a direction of travel. The motor may be simpler than a conventional powertrain, but the driver’s task remains fundamentally the same: choose where the vehicle should go.
Slowly, as EVs gained mainstream appeal, those “old school” controls began to return. Today, the best-selling electrics for any given carmaker are usually the ones that are cars that happen to be electric rather than being electric for EV sake.
Will the Traditional Gear Lever Return?
Probably not everywhere, but it isn’t disappearing entirely. In fact, it’s making a bit of a comeback. It’s the traditional manual transmission that is becoming rarer than an uncirculated wheat penny. Among automatic vehicles, some manufacturers retain conventional-looking selectors because customers understand them and find them comfortable to use. And a few of those manufacturers who de
The likely future is a mixture of approaches. Electronic shift-by-wire technology will remain in nearly all vehicles because it offers packaging flexibility and integrates readily with modern vehicle electronics. And is less likely to break. EVs will likely continue to use compact selectors, while performance cars and pickup trucks may preserve more traditional controls where they contribute to driver engagement.
The important distinction is between modernizing a control and needlessly complicating it.
Perhaps that’s what the industry has forgotten: The best automotive controls aren’t always the newest or the smallest. They’re the ones that do their jobs so well that the driver barely has to think about them.
Sources
- Sonnax, “
<li>The Drive, “
