Swop Reverse and Drive Positions on the Stick Shift

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Crashed today because of this. Thought I put my car in drive. Was in reverse. Slammed into the car behind me. Standard or not, terrible design. And why doesn't the leaf come with a reverse beep? I mean it does, but it's hardly audible, certainly not when the radio's on (which it was).
 
Streiger, sorry to hear about your crash. My wife and I also have an issue with the gear positions. I often get it wrong and engage D when I want R and vice versa. Frustrating! I recently had the opportunity to test drive Jaguar's new i-Pace, EV. Amazing! And guess what, it has buttons instead of shifter. Why couldn't the geniuses at Nissan do that? Why insist on a old school format? Shifters are obsolete!
 
i recall touring cars in the 90's had a column shifter and they would pull back to change up and push forward to go down. it seemed natural to them... seems as though people have thoughts on the same idea. But with this car.. you just want it to go forward not change up or down the gears. I've read the points from the others.. P to D is backwards and D to R is forwards. sounds like buttons are best. I've moved to a BMW i3 and it is a round toggle on the steering column..twist forwards (clockwise) for D and the opposite for R. I still reach for the center gear as it is in the nissan leaf to find that I'll be upsetting some menus for my radio if I do that. I'll get used to it.

in the years I've driven my leaf I've never put it in the wrong gear (D or R) that i can recall.. maybe you guys have more than 1 car to drive and it's confusing you when you switch and your muscle memory isn't nailing it.
 
The shifter is fine. Too many people think that everything needs to accommodate to THEIR preferences... Well if you want that, then you can obsess personalizing your phones. Pay attention to what you are doing if unfamiliar, Get used to your car.... And you wont crash.
 
powersurge said:
The shifter is fine. Too many people think that everything needs to accommodate to THEIR preferences... Well if you want that, then you can obsess personalizing your phones. Pay attention to what you are doing if unfamiliar, Get used to your car.... And you wont crash.
At least the steering wheel turns in the direction you intend to travel.
 
streiger said:
Crashed today because of this. Thought I put my car in drive. Was in reverse. Slammed into the car behind me. Standard or not, terrible design. And why doesn't the leaf come with a reverse beep? I mean it does, but it's hardly audible, certainly not when the radio's on (which it was).

:roll:
 
streiger said:
Crashed today because of this. Thought I put my car in drive. Was in reverse. Slammed into the car behind me. Standard or not, terrible design. And why doesn't the leaf come with a reverse beep? I mean it does, but it's hardly audible, certainly not when the radio's on (which it was).

I don't know about 2018, but 2011 through 2017 models show the shift position as a large capital letter in the dash display in front of the driver. I don't see how you could missinterpret what "gear" the car is in.
 
GerryAZ said:
streiger said:
Crashed today because of this. Thought I put my car in drive. Was in reverse. Slammed into the car behind me. Standard or not, terrible design. And why doesn't the leaf come with a reverse beep? I mean it does, but it's hardly audible, certainly not when the radio's on (which it was).

I don't know about 2018, but 2011 through 2017 models show the shift position as a large capital letter in the dash display in front of the driver. I don't see how you could missinterpret what "gear" the car is in.
'18 also does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DwWyExJc4c.
 
cwerdna said:
'18 also does:

Yes, definitely. One of the first things I pointed out to my wife, when she drove my 2018 Leaf, was that the shift position was shown in the dash display. This is the same for our family 2018 Honda Odyssey.

The Odyssey "shifter" has a similar layout. The shift positions are controlled through buttons, set in a vertical layout on the front. The button layout is, top to bottom: P, R, N, D/S. Maybe it is a trend.
 
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/05/expect-annoying-shifter-next-new-car-blame-technology/

If you have the freedom to redesign for an intuitive interface, I wonder what would be best? Reverse is usually only used zero or one time at the start, and again at the end of a drive (not often). If you are backing-up, you probably twist in your car seat (at least, I hope you're not relying 100% on the camera!). There could be a grab-handle to the right of the driver's seat, about where the parking brake is on some cars: when you twist around to look out the back window, grab the handle and squeeze a button to set the drive direction to reverse. This would simply produce a warning chime if the car is not already in Park. When reverse is actuated, for further confirmation, the car could play a "reverse" sound on the _inside_ of the car (you know... like your phone can play a separate sound for SMS messages from each of your kids?). A red LED on the dash could light; if the driver is looking forwards, it should be very hard to miss that the car is going to go backwards.
 
I just came to the forums for the first time to start a post about this and was gladdened to see this topic is already 10 pages long. The very first thing I noticed when driving this car was that the shift lever direction was counter-intuitive. I have made mistakes already (that fortunately didn't turn into an accident) over this. I guess I now have a lot of reading to do within this topic to see if anybody has actually succeeded in making this modification. There are some obvious downsides though:
1. Voiding the warranty
2. A 3rd party (e.g. a service tech) damaging your vehicle because he wasn't expecting this modification
3. Resale consequences
Anyway, I've got 9 other pages to read so I better get cracking.
 
I agree, when you think about it, it doesn't make sense but personally, when I don't think about it, it comes naturally to me. I'm guessing it's because on a floor-mounted automatic, you pull back to go forward. True you also pull back to go back(in reverse) but on floor-mounted shifters I generally just pull right over R and go to D, then to get into R I end up going forward from D, just like the Leaf.
For someone not used to floor mounted automatics or first-time drivers, explaining why on the Leaf you push forward to go backward and pull backward to go forward doesn't make sense, I'll agree on that.
 
If you spend half your day driving a fork lift and toggle forward to go forward, neutral in the middle and back to go backwards and then you get in your car and try the same thing.
 
Not sure if I mentioned this yet but Jaguar I-Pace did this right. D (drive) button is forward of the R (reverse) button, neutral in the middle.
Has not been a issue, just can't imagine it any other way.
 
How about this ;) ?

CQbo8Hl.jpg


I have just got my, lightly used, 2018 Leaf and really did not like the "backward" shifter. I do not drive, and did only few times, an automatic transmission and did not want to get accustomed to Leaf's backward shifter, so I swapped the direction after only one trip.
Please take all following info as just a description of what I did to my car, I am not advising anybody to do that. Nissan warranty might be violated, damage to you and your car may happen.

My car is ZE1, 2018, but it seems the mod would be the same to all previous years too. I did it based on 2015 service manual, shiffter assembly and connectors looks exactly the same, pinout seems to be the same too, only wire colors in the harness are different. I also saw 2011 shifter assembly at eBay and it looked the same too.

Core of the mod is swapping two pairs of wires anywhere in the harness between shifter assembly and cars VCM. I did it at shifter side. There is no good access to the harness w/o dismantling the entire center console, VCM side might be better, but I did not look there.

The core of the mod is shown in shifter assembly connector image borrowed from 20015 service manual:

Kr9aVXU.png


I removed shifter assembly based on the LED Mod description:

https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=14069

Swapping the two pairs of wires swaps shifter operation. On the top of it I also rotated shifter knob 180deg and kept the "P" letter not rotated. Doing that leaves surfaces of the two buttons not even, so somebody may prefer keeping the knob alone or rotate the whole thing and ignore "P" letter upside down.
More images and few more notes are at IMGUR:

https://imgur.com/a/NaKcufM?&nc
 
I see you had trouble removing the connector pins and resorted to cutting the wires to swap them. For what it's worth, I find a single staple with one the legs bent flat makes a great tool for releasing catches that hold metal pins into plastic connector housings.
 
There are only 2 stick position a driver can choose, how simple do you need it to be? Try driving something with 30 or more possible combinations, mutilple sticks and 2 or 3 speed rear axles.
No matter which way around they built the shift gate, 1/2 would say it is backwards. It is what it is and get over it!
I have one vehicle that has 30 possible forward ratios to choose from (5x3x2), the Leaf has 2 and you can't remember them?
 
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