Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day. Nothing like a few days of sleep, good food and TV to encourage me to do work. Because of these motivating factors, I will now begin working and will not stop until Friday morning. So yeah. If anyone has, at any point, researched the Battle of Leuctra and has any opinions to share, feel encouraged to share them with me. I have eight pages left of a ten page paper, and I'm just waiting to run out of things to talk about.
So, back to the point of this post, which was to procrastinate. With all the TV I watched over the past few days (excluding baseball, more than I'd watched in the past three or four months), I had the opportunity to see a lot of funny stuff. Including a car commercial that advertised symmetrical all wheel drive. Which got me thinking...does this mean that some cars come with asymmetrical AWD?
So yeah. That's the kind of stuff I find funny. Moving right along...I'm gonna see if I can hammer out this paper in the next two hours (two more pages, not eight; different paper). Whee. I can't wait for January...acting for credit! Yay!
4 comments:
Decided not to shill for Subaru?
In any case, I think symmetrical means an even 50/50 split front/rear, whereas asymmetrical is more like 90/10 front/rear.
http://www.rubicon-trail.com/4WD101/difference_4WD_awd.html
Automatic AWD system is the newest kid on the block. PR agency generated names like "Real Time 4WD", "intelligent AWD" or "active AWD" are hiding the fact that automatic AWD is essentially a sophisticated 2WD system. Automatic asymmetric AWD would be the best term for them.
Here is how they work: Under normal conditions one axle gets 100% of the torque - meaning you are driving in 2WD. During traction loss at the driven axle (could be front or rear) a fully automatic system (hydraulic, mechanical or electronic) makes up to 50% of the torque to the axle with traction available. This means you have to lose traction in 2WD on your driven axle first and then the other axle will be added and try to keep the car moving and stable. Once the primary driven axle regains traction and both axles rotate at the same speed again, the system reverts back to 2WD. So, for a moment you had AWD.
Automatic asymmetric AWD is much less capable in off-road settings than full time AWD systems and inferior to full time 4WD. However, automatic asymmetrical AWD is becoming more and more sophisticated and offers pretty much everything consumers expect for everyday (pavement) driving.
Examples: Honda CRV, (newer) Toyota RAV4, LandRover Freelander, Isuzu Trooper (TOD), Volvo V70, 1999 and later Jeep Grand Cherokee (in high range)
This explains much.
Thanks.
Jeeps rule
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