Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has issued a recall for 1.1 million vehicles to address an issue where the vehicle moved after owners were confused about whether the gearshift was in ‘Park’. This was caused by the ‘step-less’ gear shifter, which returns to the same position after the gear is selected, without any physical change in the position of the lever, unlike traditional automatic shifters.
The recall notice, announced in an FCA press release, affects 1.1 million vehicles equipped with ZF eight-speed gearboxes – 811,000 in the US, 52,000 in Canada, 17,000 in Mexico and the balance of 249,000 vehicles elsewhere. Vehicles affected are Dodge Chargers and Chrysler 300s manufactured between 2012 to 2014, and 2014 to 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokees.
Apparently, the gear position confusion issue occurred despite the vehicles concerned having a warning chime if the vehicles were left in ‘Drive’ with the engine running and the door open. Owners were apparently confused because the gear shifter did not show a physical position for either ‘Park’ or ‘Drive’ positions, with only an indicator light showing gear position.
According to FCA, it is aware of 41 cases of injury that might be related to the vehicle moving after the owner had inadvertently left the gear shift in ‘Drive’, and exited the vehicle. FCA maintains that there was no fault in any of the cars’ systems or mechanicals. “The vehicles involved in these events were inspected and no evidence of equipment failure was found,” said the statement.
FCA will be recalling affected vehicles to install “additional warnings with a transmission-shift strategy to automatically prevent a vehicle from moving, under certain circumstances, even if the driver fails to select ‘park’.” It is not known what measures FCA will take to remedy the situation, perhaps a software change to prevent the vehicle from moving if speed is at zero, or a hardware change to provide a tactile “feel” to the shifter.
Current versions of the affected models have all moved on to more conventional gear levers (as per the Grand Cherokee pictured above), while the Chrysler 300 now adopts a Jaguar-esque rotary gear selector.
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Stupid design caused the problem. How difficult is it to have a physical park position? Was FCA trying to save money? Having a warning chime is nothing if the driver (who may not be the owner) doesn’t know what the chime is about.
Not quite sure why you got the thumbs down.
People are prone to making mistakes if you introduce them to something they are not familiar to.
If someone introduced a car with the brake and throttle pedals swapped, I would like to see these guys not making a mistake.
That said, its poor showing for FCA to not have implemented an automatic e-brake….since most cars already have hill start.
Peugeot should recall their 308 too. For the reversed-speedometer
In other words, they are too dumb to be allowed to drive a car. Is it too hard to check for the P at the gear indicator (which is usually just in the instrument panel in front of them)?
i don’t think u understand the article, what more to understand the technical. huh…..arrrgh!
read the article first before you comment lah..!!
semua pun x pandai.
Don’t BMW and Mercedes-Benz more or less have the same system whereby the selector stays in one place?Just press the P button and you are off.And nobody is complaining.Must be the Americans.
Agreed – Audi too has em in newer models. Its only odd the first few times you try it. After that its 2nd nature. In fact I prefer that you can select park immediately from either D or R or N. It’s immediate and causes less clunking of gears which would happen in a normal stepped selector, whereby if you want to go from P to D or D to P, you would have to cycle through R and N. Wonder if anyone will complaint about Acura’s all buttons gear selector? Which has no physical positioning other than the button being lit up and instrument panel showing what gear position is on.
Well, USA is a country that have some of the most ridiculous car related lawsuit. So no surprise there.
My Prius in 2009 had this, and I must say, having this stepless system requires you to pay attention more then a more traditional solution where you just whack the lever all the way up. But again, it’s not like the car shoots forward if you accidentally leave it in D.
It is nice to have all the electronic control instrument in our car. But sometime some mechanical part of it must be maintain to allow us as a driver to intervene when needed. As an example I do not understand why the car manufacture want to replace the manually control hand brake with electronic control one. I think the mechanical control handbrake at least can be use when all of the electronic system fail while we drive. Experience it once when driving suddenly battery warning light keep flashing. Free the gear, and let the car cruise it self to the side of the road slowly. Had to use the handbrake to slow the car because pedal brake is hard to press due to engine shut down, alternator broke down.
why did you have to put the gearbox in neutral?