what’s the difference between 4-wheel drive and all-wheel drive?
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Branding and marketing.
Sometimes companies use “full time 4wd” or “AWD” to indicate that there’s no manual switch between 2WD and 4WD, and that all four wheels turn most all of the time, but there’s no hard fast rule
Now there are actually dozens of different unique mechanical configurations that can be used to drive all four wheels of a car/truck that use different combinations of differentials, clutches, viscous couplings, helical or planetary gearing and switching gearboxes combined with electronics to turn things on and off with buttons or automation. It actually gets really fuzzy and situational deciding which wheels are driven at different times with some modern systems. The only thing they all have in common is that they are set up so there is a way to drive all four wheels, and at any given time, the car is driving somewhere between 1 and 4 of them.
Now it’s “Quattro” “4-matic” “active-4” “S-AWC” or whatever the company wants to call it to describe its “special sauce” for driving 4 car wheels from one or more engines/electric motors.
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