The move from a traditional shifter to a monostable shifter is an obvious step backwards for one, painfully obvious, reason: It gives the user less information

The move from a traditional shifter to a monostable shifter is an obvious step backwards for one, painfully obvious, reason: It gives the user less information. With a traditional shifter, looking at or feeling the position of the knob immediately tells you what gear you're in. The monostable shifter takes that away. The designers probably thought that, if the sports-car segment can get used to paddle shifters, perhaps a stick-form of the paddle-shifter could fly with other users. This may have been true were park not thrown into the mix too.