My feelings on the stalk have gone from "confusing" to "dangerous"

[summerlinLV]

I have concerns with moving the shifter to the steering column. I have multiple times hitting the windshield wiper stalk while parking or tight turns. This is just an annoyance for the windshield wiper, but will be problematic if I hit the shifter while driving.

Sponsored

 

[dearbornjim]

Since getting my 25 Premium my chief complaint/grumble has been that I don't find the gear stalk "intuitive." I have to intentionally think about whether I'm putting it in Drive or Reverse because the order just doesn't play well in my brain. Up for Reverse and Down for Drive just feels backwards to me, and I can't shake it. It's inconvenient, but I'm getting used to the beat I have to take to make sure I do what I intended to do.

But then last week something else happened that moved it into the "dangerous" category for me .. I made a left turn under a highway underpass onto the entrance ramp and turned directly into the bright Florida morning sun - it was blinding. Made more so because my windshield was dusty/dirty. So instinct and years of muscle memory kicked in, and I reached up with my right hand to tap the wiper fluid to clean the windshield. Only it wasn't the wiper fluid function anymore. It's now the gear stalk, and I took the car out of gear. Now I realize it a slightly different action, button vs stalk tap but still my brain just expected it to be on the right side.

Because I was going slow in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I didn't even realize what had happened at first. It wasn't until I realized I had no "gas" when I pressed the pedal that I realized I was coasting in what I guess is Neutral. Fortunately, I was able to quickly decide to coast to the shoulder of the ramp without getting hit by the cars behind me and stop and figure out what to do. Which, by the way, wasn't just putting it back in drive - that didn't work. I had to turn the car off and on again to get it set back into drive.

Maybe this is just a "me" thing and others are adjusting to the gear stalk better than I am. But even still, it doesn't feel like you should be able to accidentally put the car in neutral while driving it by accidentally tapping the end of the stalk. In higher-speed traffic, that would have been a deadly mistake. Doing that same thing with the dial would have highly intentional. Putting that function in the same space that your fingers are used to playing with lower stakes features like wipers, turn signals, and high beams seems questionable to me.


Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

I never drove one of these but back in the days of manual transmission with a column shifter reverse was Up. Maybe it's a holdover from those days. In any case I had the same arrangement in my last car. I had no problem getting used to it then and this time I didn't even think about it when I took it for a test ride.

 

[Trielectric]

Quote:
"Most cars had bench-seats and three people could sit in the front. This meant a floor shifter was in the way. "
The floor shifter was a big helper with the bench seats. Your girl sat up against you inline with the 4th gear shift, your hand ended up between her legs after the shift!

 

[melissphillips]

How does the shifter "feel"?

We had a ICE car with the shifter on steering column, but with it you have this very "mechanical/tackle feel" where you had to put some effort into it and it wasn't just straight up and down. You were "shifting".

The thing that worries me a bit when I hear where the 2025 shifter is now is that it will feel more like the windshield wiper control.

Another thought occurred to me, that it would have been better is to have push buttons like my mom old Rambler had.

BTW another side note, to this day I have never gotten used to the window controls, I still sometime pull on them when I want them to go down.

Spot on the feel of it is the same feel as a windshield wiper turning on there’s nothing mechanical feeling about it like a gear shifter

 

[StevenC56]

Ours feels and works fine.

 

[4sallypat]

I prefer the original Lightning shifter with the full mechanical feel from Park to Drive...

 

[StevenC56]

I prefer the original Lightning shifter with the full mechanical feel from Park to Drive...

Yeah, but there's a ton more real estate in the Lightning.

 

[E90alex]

I prefer the original Lightning shifter with the full mechanical feel from Park to Drive...

There’s a lot of malfunctions with that “mechanical” shifter with it failing and then the car can’t be driven at all. I’ll take the electronic shifter any day.

 

[melissphillips]

Can I guess that you're a relatively new driver and never driven a vehicle with a column-mounted gear select lever? For people who learned to drive on 1980's or earlier vehicles, up-for-reverse and down-for-drive is absolutely natural.

Oh if only LOL< Sadly I'm old enough to say I learned to drive in the 80s on a stick shift. If fact, I drove a manual stick well into the 2000s. The only stalk hear shift I've drive was my dad's on Saturday go to the dump truck which was from the 50s and it took MUSCLE to change the gears with that stalk, no a light tap of a button.

 

[melissphillips]

Every car needs to have the ability to go into neutral while in motion, in case there is a trapped accelerator pedal or otherwise unusual event. It's also important for required compliance testing and cleaning the brake rotors.

You should be able to push the monostable shifter fully down (2 clicks) to go back into drive while in motion. If you hit the park button on the end by accident, then you might have to come to stop with your foot on the brake to shift back into gear. Again, this would be a safety feature in case of unintended acceleration.

There is a learning curve associated with it, but I wouldn't call it dangerous.

The issue isn't that you can put it in neutral - it's that you can unintentionally do it with a light tap of a button that is in most Ford vehicles reserved for the wiper fluid. It should be something that requires you do it intentionally.

 

[StevenC56]

I really doubt they are going to change this just because a few people don't care for the design. At most it might get refined slightly in the 26 models, but if you are expecting them to retrofit everyone's car for a different design it's just not likely to even get consideration. Probably 95% of 25 owners are OK with it just the way it is.

 

[ChrisO]

I really doubt they are going to change this just because a few people don't care for the design. At most it might get refined slightly in the 26 models, but if you are expecting them to retrofit everyone's car for a different design it's just not likely to even get consideration. Probably 95% of 25 owners are OK with it just the way it is.

I tend to believe they aren't going to change this either, but the ironic part of this is that they changed from the dial shifter because "a few people" complained.

It would be interesting to see a survey of complaints against the two different shifters.

 

[StevenC56]

I tend to believe they aren't going to change this either, but the ironic part of this is that they changed from the dial shifter because "a few people" complained.

It would be interesting to see a survey of complaints against the two different shifters.

Where did you read that they changed from the dial to the stalk shifter because "a few people" complained?

 

[ChrisO]

Where did you read that they changed from the dial to the stalk shifter because "a few people" complained?

OK, call it speculation on my part. There were people that complained about it, and even called it a safety issue, and even threatened to sue, before Ford changed it. But no, I have never seen an explanation from Ford that says why they changed it.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

The stalk shifter was a solution to a non existent problem.

Want to make the car more Mustang like? Put in the Mustang shifter.

Sponsored