Comment by BuffaloEric33 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BuffaloEric33 | Hacker News Reader

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I had a 21 Y, and now a 26. If you actually buckle your seat belt and turn on the feature, the car will auto select the correct gear without needing to do....anything. After a short while you get used to it on the rare occasions you do need to swipe the screen to change gear. Another thing I didn't notice during test drives, is that it does actually have permanent gear shifting controls - they're just by the hazard light (not a great place to use them often, but still there).

At least for me, the 26 is so much better built and fixed the insane body roll the 21 had that I'm quite happy with it.

My wife has also been full-EV for 5 years, first with a Kia Niro EV and now with a Hyundai Ioniq 9. Those are pretty good as "real car" EVs as well, though not without their own quirks (and, unfortunately, the Ioniq 9 recently had to have the ICCU replaced, as Hyundai still seemingly hasn't figured that problem out over the years).

EVs only really have forward and reverse, so I assume that's the automatic switching it does. Why in the world would you want a car to automatically switch between them? Even if that worked perfectly that doesn't sound all that helpful, and anything less than absolutely perfect sounds at best really annoying, and at worst dangerous.

Not to say that the Solterra's is ideal either. It's an awkward dial shifter below the HVAC controls, but at least it's a physical interface.

> Even if that worked perfectly that doesn't sound all that helpful, and anything less than absolutely perfect sounds at best really annoying, and at worst dangerous.

It works but it's a lot slower than just using the stalk or even the on screen shifter. But that's probably because I got used to not needing to come to a stop before switching gears.

How does it know whether you want to go forwards or backwards?

It's based on your surroundings and probably the car's recent movements. To get it to switch you have to do a series of actions which should pretty much confirm that it's what you want to do. For example, if you're backing out of a parking space it'll only trigger a switch to drive if you come to a stop and then turn the wheel some amount to switch to drive. It tells you what to do on screen if you want to trigger it and don't know how.

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