Comment on Tourists write-off uninsured rental BMW 4WD in river crossing gone horribly wrong in Iceland
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 9 months agoIt’s not. They mean different things, and the terms are not really all that standard since there are many different types and everyone does things a bit differently.
In general, AWD is generally always on, 4WD often has other modes too (like 4 low, etc)… But the mechanics of how they’re setup and how they actually go about distributing power are very different and complicated whereas even when running, they aren’t really doing the same thing.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I thought 4WD meant that you drive with either two wheels or four doing the traction, and it’s a setting you turn on and off manually, while AWD turns each of the four wheels independently, which also allows for just one or three wheels turning, and it’s an automatic process.
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not… Really. It’s actually much more complicated but we’d need to compare specific vehicles to explain the differences really.
4WD does tend to have on/off and different modes while AWD usually doesn’t, so that part is kind of true?
But AWD doesn’t drive “every wheel independently”. They do usually try to turn all 4 wheels, but then a set of diffs and clutches will essentially “disconnect” the wheels that aren’t gripping, but it’s not like it’s literally independently driving each wheel…but I guess you could say it’s individually disconnecting each wheel? But that’s not really the same.
But yeah… It’s… Complicated.