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If the gear lever of the new car continues to become smaller, we media will have to bring macro lenses to shoot the car.
You must have noticed the variety of gear levers in new cars recently, which is not about the "manual or automatic" dispute in ancient times, and the endangerment of manual gears has been an old thing. Even in the automatic transmission of Yishui now, a "normal" gear lever that can fill the palm of the hand and hold it is rare.
Like the Porsche 911 (992), it uses a chic but extraordinarily small electronic shift lever that can be operated with almost only a few fingers. Probably in the same vein, volkswagen eighth generation golf, Audi A3 and other models, we have seen smaller and more aggressive gear levers - if this can still be called "pole".
Porsche 911
Golf MK8
If you think this gear lever can't be any smaller, naive. Look at the Weilai lever shift, look at the BMW iX buttonized crystal lever, and then look at the Peugeot 2008 completely plunged into the groove of the toggle switch, it can be said that the traditional center console shift lever has been reduced step by step to the extreme.
Nio Lai
BMW iX
Peugeot 2008
In addition to these pocket bars and "gear lever approximations", there are also knob shifts, button shifts, pocket gears, etc., which are also the vanguard of this "go to the gear lever movement".
The Volkswagen ID. series turned the gear lever into a structure that extends from the right side of the dashboard, and the Porsche Taycan moved the small "stick" of the 992 to the traditional ignition switch position. Operationally speaking, they can all be seen as "not a block".
Now this new car, if you sit in the car for ten minutes, you still can't find where the gear lever is, and you can't understand how to hang up to the D gear to start, which is also a completely understandable normal phenomenon.
From the old mechanical society, to the great liberation of electronic control
For traditional manual transmissions, the gear lever should naturally stay on the center control platform.
For no other reason than the early cars were longitudinal engines, so the transmission lump was usually located under the front center console. As the name suggests, the manual transmission is switched by pure human intervention by the biceps, and the gear lever grows out of the head of the transmission, which is naturally in the position we are familiar with.
Later, there were transverse engine cars and automatic transmissions, but people have become accustomed to the basic layout of car operation, even if it is an automatic transmission, the gear lever is also left on the center console.
In fact, for automatic transmissions, the shift lever input information to the gearbox relies on the electrical signal in the wire, rather than the mechanical transmission, theoretically speaking, the shift lever can be made into various forms.
The design of the American car is widely known, but the pocket gear is not all, and the button shift is also the design preferred by american luxury cars in the 50s and 60s. The position of the gear shift key varies, some are placed near the center control, some are placed on a small platform, some are placed on the left side of the dashboard, some are hidden in the left hand light panel, and some monsters are placed in the center of the steering wheel.
Mercury Monterey, delicate red and white color scheme
Ford Edsel, shift key in the center of the steering wheel
However, at this time, the shape of the gear lever was not completely liberated.
First of all, in addition to the north American fans of paper and gold at that time, the rest of the world, especially the European manual transmission is still the absolute mainstream, then the interior design still has to focus on the traditional gear shift lever. The automatic uses a similar shift lever shape, which avoids the driver from re-learning to adapt and does not require the interior designer to have extra brainstorming in this regard.
Secondly, although the automatic transmission at that time was an electrical signal input, the degree of digitization was not the same as today' level - the big brothers of the 90s and today's iPhone 13s were also powered. Driver friends with a long driving experience should remember a series of anti-stupid designs on the automatic gear lever in the early years: reverse gear must press a button, and cannot be pushed into reverse gear when driving.
Mechanical locking structure inside the automatic gear lever
These are achieved by the delicate mechanical construction inside the shift lever, so the shift lever of the automatic transmission is not just a simple electric switch. In the "big lump" under the gear lever, there are both electronic components to identify the shift lever action, the transmission output command at the other end of the guide line, and mechanical structures such as springs, plastic snaps, and sliders, providing appropriate damping and anti-dull protection.
Of course, it is not without a small size of the solution - otherwise how to use the American luxury car, but for most models, the space under the center console is idle, and the simple, cheap and reliable "stupid method" is the mainstream choice. It was only in recent decades, with the increasing digitization of cars, that the mechanical burdens in the automatic gear lever were stripped away little by little.
So the era of electronic shift levers arrived.
Our first impression of the electronic shift lever began largely with BMW's famous "big chicken leg" in the early 21st century. The electronic gear lever is no longer a jump between the various gears, but relies on the recognition of the flick action to switch gears, and the gear lever itself always stands straight.
BMW's original electronic gear lever still has a mechanical anti-error operation: the stop rod damping is controlled by the electrical signal, and cannot be pushed when stopping and turning off, such as pushing into the reverse gear in the car. Soon, however, the gear lever will be completely electronic, and you can push it in any direction at any time - the on-board computer will automatically recognize and filter out your dead operation.
The original "big chicken leg" because of the existence of electronic control machinery, the volume under the stop rod is not much smaller than the traditional automatic shift lever. Today, BMW's electronic gear lever in addition to the shift lever body, the remaining hidden part is negligible, and now it can actually be arranged anywhere in the car.
Electronic stop bar for BMW X5 E70
Now the 3 Series' integrated center control lever assembly
When the final mechanical structure is no longer necessary, then the only thing that limits the shape of the shift lever is the habit and imagination.
Special rod, for special you
Another name for the electronic gear lever is Shift-By-Wire/SBW – in fact, it's the only piece of the wire chassis pie that has become practical or even gradually popularized.
You'll find that the magical gear shift mechanisms we mentioned at the beginning are mostly from electric cars. This is not the difference in the structural principle of oil and electricity, but the gear lever of fuel vehicles and traditional car companies is relatively restrained, while electric vehicles and emerging brands are more "do not care" about the inherent habits.
The most restrained method is: the position is unchanged, and the shape is "de-grip and indoctrinated". The AMG GT degenerated the barrier into a "small pillow" that could be used as a wrist rest for the front trackpad, peugeot made a flying handle bar, and the Audi e-tron's barrier rod absorbed aviation elements, but also played a touch screen to support the wrist.
At the very least, if you're in a car for the first time, it's not hard to find "which thing is used to shift gears."
There are also some shapes that are far from the gear lever, but because they have gradually become a climate, they will not make you feel confused, such as knob shifting, pocket gear, and button shifting.
The knob shift was stunning on the Jaguar XF as early as 2008 and once became the iconic design of Jaguar Land Rover. Since then, the knob has been swarming with many car companies at all levels and positioning, and there has been some over-flooding trend, and now brands that pay more attention to design generally do not regard it as the first choice.
Jaguar's former lift-shift knob
Huai gear in ancient times is the symbol of American cars, modern times is the pain and happiness of Mercedes-Benz owners, contemporary with the popularity of electronic barriers, driven by electric vehicles, finally repaired into the positive results re-entered the mainstream.
The Driveway gives way to the increasingly crowded central control area, and while combining the advantages of the traditional gear lever for blind operation, Tesla has also given the Driveway a new historical mission: to double-play the joystick of the automatic driver assistance system.
The disadvantage is that it is often criticized for lack of driving sense, but it is no longer so important as the identity of electric vehicles changes. The pocket block takes up limited steering column space, but now with the automatic induction of wipers and lights, coexistence with the pocket block is no longer a problem. In addition, like the Volkswagen ID, the gear lever is fused into the dashboard to form a "pocket block that is not a pocket block".
The past life of the button shift was the American luxury car of the 60s, and in the early years, Aston Martin and Lincoln insisted, and now it is gradually becoming a flood. The requirements for the layout of the key shift are basically zero, and can be arranged everywhere in the car; the arrangement of the keys can be arbitrary, can be lined up, can form an array, can use piano keys, highlight a casual.
However, the key shift has the disadvantage of not being conducive to blind operation. No matter how it is arranged, the driver needs to shift more attention to the keys to ensure that the click is accurate, because the buttons are usually arranged on the surface of the center console, and the right hand needs to be extended farther away to reach. Frequent switching of D/R gears such as narrow road U-turns and side parking can be particularly cumbersome and inconvenient.
Even if the minimal toggle switch shifts, because there are only two operating directions before and after, this scenario is more convenient than distributed buttons.
"It looks beautiful"
To take care of convenience, one way to do this is to combine "press" and "toggle". Acura designed the reverse gear to press backwards to distinguish it from other gears; Buick's shift buttons are arranged in a row, with R and D gears being up-toggle switches, separated by downward-pressing N-stops in the middle, which improves blind operation to some extent.
Taking it a step further, it's not impossible to completely remove the gear lever – whether it can be called a "lever" or not.
Occam's big believer is Tesla, and last year's new Model S Plaid not only brought the sci-fi Yok hectic rudder, but also a startling gear-free operation device: the on-board computer judged forward or backward, automatically cut into the corresponding gear, or... Cough, swipe on the touch screen to change gears.
But then again, if you put the pattern down and only look at the shift lever, completely remove the "pole" This is really not the first time. Some supercars that focus on extreme driving give the burden to the shift paddles, and the neutral gears usually flick both sides of the paddles at the same time, leaving at most a button or lever to hang into the reverse gear.
Ferrari's former reverse button design
The LFA's reverse lever remains alone on the left side of the gauge
This is still the case in supercars, and in terms of operational efficiency during extreme racing, the paddles are far superior to the shift "pole". The need to hold the lever to shift gears is now only reflected in those performance cars that value the experience. In the Porsche 911 (992) series, the GT3 has the only "Serious" Gear lever (PDK) in the series, and the target users and dream users breathe a sigh of relief.
PDK shift lever of the 992 GT3
Fuel power is slowly coming to an end, and for pure electric vehicles that do not require a transmission, the so-called gear is just "forward", "backward" and "stop". Even if there are still surviving fuel vehicles, the vast majority of them no longer need the driver to operate the gear lever for a long time and frequently, and the shrinkage and alienation of the physical form are also inevitable results.
The high-performance sports car, which is often thought to be the last holy place, is thrown into a better solution to the pragmatism of the paddle; as for all sentient beings, it is only necessary to move forward and backward. The only players who still pursue the "orthodox" gear lever on the center console, except for the manual gear model, are the GT3's "even if it is automatically shifted and there are paddles, it can't deprive me of the right to fiddle with the gear bar".
What was once the gear lever of the car's hormones is evolving into an ordinary "switch".
Lotus Eletre
But that's not something to be lamented about.
Fundamentally, the source of the physical existence of the shift lever is the manual transmission. When automatic shift transmissions (including AT/DCT/CVT, etc.) appear, their operating mechanism continues to exist in the style of the gear lever (similar to manual transmissions), which is the result of conforming to reality and habits, rather than a necessary function. This has been proven by the American cars of the 50s and 60s.
So when the fuel vehicle is highly automated and digitized, and then when the electric era comes, the gear loses its meaning, and the advance and retreat are more suitable for operation in the form of a certain switch, and what is the need to artificially force the play.
They go as they come, all of which are honest in the form of conforming functions.