AWD vs FWD

[philip42h]

No, I'm not intending start yet another debate - 🙂 - just an observation to say how pleased I am with the bZ4X AWD configuration ...

I took two longish test drives in the dealers FWD demonstrator - it's a fine car. But I ordered an AWD out of mostly 'religious' conviction and for snowy days like today.

My car has been back to the dealer for the past week, and I've had use of the same demonstrator so could do a proper back-to-back comparison. Where we are we have relatively blind junction onto the main road on the inside of a bend. Grit and muck collect at the junction. We don't have great visibility. And every so often we find that we've pulled out onto an 'empty' road that is rapidly becoming occupied by another driver - so we need to 'hurry' a little!

The bZ4X has more than enough 'go', but 150kW over the front wheels tends to make them scrabble a bit and the car twitch. 80kW over the front wheels is much better - less inclined to spin - and another 80kW over the rear wheels makes for a much more balanced car. Well, I'm rather pleased with it!

[Yugguy1970]

It's the same reason I went from 2wd to awd, there's a junction I have to take which is turning right uphill onto a main road with a slightly blind corner.  You HAVE to pull out reasonably quickly and in damp slippy conditions the RAV would spin the fronts. 

[Hadrian1]

When we bought our Rav, we didn't especially go after a vehicle with AWD, it's just what it came with.

We have yet to drive in conditions where we would get the benefit.