cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/2362831
I don’t know how extended this is, but apparently there are car makers selling cars with no keys. Instead you download a proprietary app and use it to access your car.
I like being practical and talking to a car to turn the volume up or down, to open the door or to turn the temperature higher are things I don’t need nor want. Give me mechanical levers, reachable stalks and no proprietary bloatware. I don’t need a movie theater on wheels.
Imagine an early 2000s car running on an electric motor. That’s what I want.
As others have mentioned, it refers to the gear shift. But it actually has a meaningful origin - many years ago, the gear order was not agreed upon. Many cars had a gear shift that was PNDLR (which I’ve heard pronounced “pendler”), where reverse was at the end. At the time, it was useful to tell the difference between a PRNDL and a PNDLR shift.
Of course that was all before 1971, when PRNDL was mandated by the US government.