It's a styling thing more than anything else. My wife's 2015 Cherokee has a fully electronic transmission and a floor shifter. My '11 Ram's 545RFE is fully electronic and has a floor shifter. They went to the rotary knob to save space in the cabin and probably also to economize on parts. For what it's worth, I would prefer a pushbutton start in my '11 Ram to what I have, but I like the floor shifter. We went through decades of standardized shifting controls: they were either on the column or on the floor, just like the brake was the wide pedal in the middle and the gas the skinny pedal on the right. For important, basic controls, I wish the automakers would stick to standards. Not being able to find the windshield wipers in a rental vehicle when it suddenly starts raining at night is a problem people shouldn't have. Having to think about how to shift the transmission -- even a little bit -- is no good either. I don't mind if the engineers make things more convenient, like the push to start button, but I wish they would leave the basic "driving" controls standard. Just my $.02