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Comment by givemeethekeys | Hacker News Reader

Any car maker that uses a BMW transmission uses the same exact gear selector.

Your Alfa Romeos, Morgans, Toyota Supras are all BMWs and there's a gear selector to remind you of it every single day.

I'd love some insight as to why - was it contractual? Are car makers lazy?

I'm not aware of any modern BMW-made automatic transmissions, BMW has been using ZF transmissions in all of their modern automatic cars that I know of. You'll find a ZF8HP in most of BMW's modern vehicles, as well as many Chrysler and a few Volkswagen vehicles [1]. BMW, Chrysler (including subsidiaries, especially Jeep), and Volkswagen (including subsidiaries, especially Audi) all have quite different shifters [2] [3] [4], but they share transmission families in many vehicles.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF_8HP_transmission#Applicatio...

[2]: https://images.dealer.com/evox/stills_0640/MY2022/15237/1523...

[3]: https://carbuzz.com/cars/jeep/grand-cherokee-l/photos-interi...

[4]: https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/audi/a6/2022/oem/2022_aud...

For the shifter images, I specifically chose vehicles that have a ZF8HP transmission.

And they are tuned differently in different vehicles and different manufacturers. BMW does it the best IMHO out of those using that ZF transmission.

Check these out: Alfa Romeo: https://cdn.jdpower.com/20%20alfa%20giulia%20dash%20sessions...

Morgan Aero 8: https://www.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/styles/g...

Toyota Supra: https://pictures.topspeed.com/IMG/jpg/201905/toyota-supra---...

All of them seem to share the same iDrive style that BMW has in their automatics.

It made me think they share BMW transmissions too.

Toyota also uses ZF transmissions a lot, but more importantly, the new Toyota Supra is basically co-developed with BMW from their Z4 sports car

The shifter isn't the only BMW-looking thing in that Supra's interior, it is a modified BMW Z4 interior as the Supra as a whole is a BMW collaboration. As for the other two, I would say the presence of the BMW shifter has more to do with them not wanting to spend money on designing their own than any contractual obligation or anything.

Yup, designed (as in engineered) by magna on behalf of both Toyota and BMW.

IIRC, the BMW 7 series was the first production car to use a ZF with a 7 or 8 speed.

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