“I can’t think of any consumer push for a radical change in gear-shifters,” he said. “I’ve heard of reinventing the wheel. I have not heard of reinventing the shifter. Whose idea was this?”
Genesis , the luxury brand owned by South Korea’s Hyundai Motor , made what the company calls the Crystal Sphere for the GV60 electric sport-utility vehicle, which the company has described as a piece of automotive art. The glass ball sits in the center console and glows when the owner approaches the car—a bit like a fancy snow globe—rotating 180 degrees upside down when the vehicle is turned on to reveal a twist-knob shifter.
Genesis’s European division last year put out a nearly four-minute video explaining how the orb works.
One driver said they’d put a reminder on a Post-it note to run an errand and stuck it in the console, partly touching the Crystal Sphere.
“When I turned off the car, it grabbed the paper and pulled it inside,” they wrote in an online forum last summer. “Now when I turn on or off the car, I can hear the paper. Can’t really see it anymore.”
Why are vehicle companies somehow so bad at this?
I was looking into getting a new car, newest car I have is 10 years old, and almost immediately I'm really turned off by the changes and interior of most vehicles. I feel like I went into a coma and woke up and I'm confused by "the future".