Cars became part of our everyday life in the past few decades. Widespread use of cars increased as other infrastructure developments occurred. During the first days of vehicles, the design and technologies were limited. Due to the limited technologies, riding the car was not easy, and its maintenance was even complicated. But nowadays technologies got more advanced and riding a vehicle became more manageable than ever. If it was hard to get hands-on experience in a car before buying, services like Carmonkey made it simple. One can select a vehicle as per their convenience and comfort through these services.
Buying a vehicle takes a long time, so selecting the right one is a significant factor. Try to buy a car which has all the desired features. It is not easy to add more features after purchasing a car, and mostly it will not be cost-effective. Some modifications can even affect the company warranty, so try to avoid such situations. Before buying a vehicle for the family, consider everyone who is going to drive it. Everyone will not have the same driving skills. Many people try to avoid driving manual gear vehicles due to the complications in shifting gears. So if such people are going to drive the car, try to buy an automatic gear vehicle. The car with automatic gear transmission will avoid the complex manoeuvring of the manual transmission. But there are different types of gear shift levers for automated transmission vehicles. Before buying a car with automatic transmission from services like carmonkey, familiarise yourself with all the kinds of gear levers.
Stick type shifting lever
A stick-type shifting lever is the most basic and entry-level lever that comes with low-cost vehicles. One can find such levers in cars like TATA Tiago automatic, Maruthi Suzuki-celereo automatic, etc. All these entry-level automated transmission vehicles use this lever due to its familiarity with the manual transmission levers, and this familiarity helps a new user of automatic transmission. These shift levers are more similar in design to manual shift levers. But working is entirely different from each other. Manual levers work by putting in individual slots positioned for selected gears. Even though the stick levers also work by putting in certain gated slots, these slots are not for the specific pinion. Moving the stick lever through the cuts put the vehicle in different modes like drive, reverse, park, etc.
Joystick type lever
A joystick gear lever is similar to a stick lever in design. But it differs in working. The stick never moves through the gated slots. It remains in the same place and returns to the previous position after pulling or pushing on it. The electronic mechanism senses the movement of the lever in different directions and puts the vehicle into different modes accordingly. Some push buttons accompany the joystick lever for functions like park mode. Sometimes it is hard to identify the drive mode selected. This disadvantage is one of the most significant design flaws in joystick levers. The only way to know the driving mode is to look at the digital display or look for LED indicators. But this lever gives a more luxurious look than a traditional stick lever. One can find such levers in BMW and Audi vehicles.
The rotary type gear selector
Several carmakers keep the stick type gear levers to resemble the traditional gear levers for attracting geared car owners towards gearless cars. But actually, there is no need for any sticks for an automated transmission system. There are several electronic sensors and other components that help in the selection of required gear. So the input can be just a low voltage signal. The rotary type gear selector does precisely this. As the driver rotates a rotary knob in the central console, the driving modes switch between drive, reverse, park, etc. Here in the rotary type gear selector, the only way to identify the current driving mode is from LED indicators or digital display. But such a selector gives more Aesthetics, and the central console will remain minimal. Jaguar and Renault like companies use these types of selectors.
Push-button gear selector
One of the simplest methods of gear selection is by push-button gear selectors. These are simple push-buttons that are present in many other devices. The arrangement can differ according to the carmaker. But each push button is dedicated to a specific driving mode. Long time use of push-button selectors will help the driver understand which button is assigned for each function. So it is somewhat more informal than a joystick and rotary gear selectors. Some Austin Martin cars use this method.
Stalk gear selector
This type of gear selector is not widely used. A lever extended out behind the steering wheel is the gear selector. Moving it up and down changes the driving modes. These are easier to reach, but under gear, selection can happen due to the positioning of the selector.