MikeinDenver said:
Who still alive really drives a 3 speed floor shift?
My neighbor does, as do many owners of vintage '1930-50s pickups and hotrods that are still on the road. They may be obsolete, but they are not non-existent, and the fact that they exist refutes your blanket assertion that "up" in a manual shifter always means "drive."
Those sequentials are not manuals.
They most certainly are manuals. They utilize a manual clutch, and they do not change gears unless the shift lever is actuated--there is nothing "automatic" about them. Perhaps you are confusing a sequential transmission with a dual-clutch semi-automatic, such as the Porsche PDK or VW DSG, which share the attribute of not being able to "skip" gears when shifting. True sequential transmissions are utilized mostly in high-performance/race cars and custom street cars powered by motorcycle drivetrains, so they are not commonly seen in production vehicles, but they do exist and also contradict your blanket statement about shifting direction and car movement.
Also comparing the LEAF shifter to a standard PRND automatic is silly because they are nothing alike.
They are not the same thing, but they are indeed alike in the particular "directional" respect that is being discussed: the Leaf shares the "RND" configuration exactly with a console-mounted conventional automatic shifter, with R requiring a forward shift and D requiring a backward one. That makes the comparison completely relevant.
I was just making the statement that it is not necessarily intuitive.
That is true, but one person's "intuitive" is another person's "confounding," and you admit as much by including the weasel-word "necessarily" in your statement. It is a common trait to conflate personal preference with universal truth, but in reality, people are different--some are right-handed, some are left, some are ambidextrous. If the Leaf shifter is so abrasive to someone's sensibility that they are forced to modify the car and reverse it, so be it. It's a free world and if you own something, you should be able to change it to meet your needs better. If you are leasing, or the car is still under warranty, and the mod is not easily reversible, I would think carefully about the ramifications of such mods.
My point was that I do not see this issue as anything but a simple adaptation for the driver. I have probably owned and driven hundreds of different vehicles in my life, equipped with every type of manual transmission (including sequentials in both street and race cars), automatics (torque converter type as well as dual-clutch semi-automatics), CVTs, and now the single-speed Leaf. I have my preferences, which may be different than others, but I recognize that my task as a driver is to be able to adapt to whatever controls the car presents. I have never found this dangerous or even difficult to the point of frustration, as some here have expressed, and adaptation to the Leaf was no different for me than any other car I have driven, and has never caused me a moment's concern. It was definitely easier than the '57 Plymouth push-button automatic I had at one time.
YMMV,
TT