We check out the shifter in the 2018 GMC Terrain crossover.
TranscriptJAMES RISWICK: This is James Riswick for Autoblog. And I'm in the all-new GMC Terrain. And if you're wondering what the rattle is, well, this is the one with the diesel engine.
But I'm here to talk about this new electronic shifter, which is-- it's ridiculous. You push for park. You pull for reverse. You push for neutral. You pull for drive. And then if you want to select a low gear, let's say you're going downhill, to do that, you press L and then you can select your gear up and down, because that in some way to someone made sense.
Now, the idea of an electronic shifter is not a bad one. Just look at how much space on the center console you have here, specifically compared to what's in the mechanically virtually identical Chevrolet Equinox. So the idea in its most basic form, not bad.
But it's the design itself. Just for starters, look how much space this is taking up. It's ridiculous.
Mercedes has an electronic shifter, serves the exact same functional purpose. It's up here. Jaguar, Ford, Ram, they have a rotary knob-- well, one kind of like this. And you can see how much space it would take up, just about the size right there, that you'd have for other things over here or more storage or anything, really.
But then there's just the functionality of it. This is just different for the sake of being different. There's nothing clever. This is not moving the game on in any way. There's nothing natural about the functionality, especially this nonsense over here.
I've also heard that it could potentially be a safety problem. I'm not so sure about that. But at least, just for instance, let's say you're just trying to grab your phone or change the climate control. You could hit neutral by accident.
That is not ideal. So in general, this is just a solution to a problem that only sort of existed. Again, I can't emphasize enough, ridiculous.
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