I much prefer the sophisticated Electronic Transmission Control on my Gen 2, over the more conventional Stalk that was on my Gen1. The Old Fashion Stalk had a way of being in the way of other controls. I can't help but wonder if Toyota may have produced a prototype Prius, (at least on paper), with a row of Push Buttons, instead of the Park Button & Joy Stick combination. I would think about buying one in a minuet if they did! It would be much more logical. The Buttons could even be put to the left of the steering wheel, so that the Driver Only could access them. That's the way Chrysler did it back in the day with their Mechanical Buttons. Since all the functions of the Prius Joy Stick are electrical switches, I wonder if anyone has actually made such an alteration to their Prius, converting it to all Buttons? Tesla is the only car that I know of being made today that has Push Button Drive Controls. Hey, if you're going to "borrow" an idea, you can't do much better than Tesla! While essentially the same as Gen 2, I don't like the location of the drive controls on Gen. 3. The Joy Stick & Park Button seem less Coordinated with each other. The Joy Stick seems to eat up a lot of "Real-estate" too. I can reach the Joy Stick to put the car in Drive, without removing my right hand from the wheel on my Gen 2. Not sure that is possible on Gen 3. I have discovered, (by forgetting to press Park), that my '08 automatically goes into Park if I just press the Power Button to shut the car down. That is a great feature, as it prevents the car from rolling if the driver forgets to hit Park.
What they (OGS) need to make is an electronic shifter with button locations that reflect the position of the original shifter for each drive mode. Also there's so much unused space. They could easily integrate a miniature ON-OFF slide switch for the power mode so that you have the ability to put the drive mode into PWR automatically every time you power up. R ____ Brand N __- Logo D- PWR- B
