Comment on Tourists write-off uninsured rental BMW 4WD in river crossing gone horribly wrong in Iceland
niktemadur@lemmy.world 6 months agoI 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 6 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.