i once had a rav4 (1st gen) - put it for sale within 1 month!
so my summary now on how all subaru might work
front-back: some if not most can go 10/90 - 90/10 torque transfer: if that's true wow
left right: they use a fluid to stiffen the wheel with no traction transferring torque to the wheel with traction. not sure how effective but perhaps pretty ok.
if BOTH are true you could get 80% torque going to ONE wheel??? (number made up: assume left rear is the only wheel not spinning the centre diff will transfer 90% torque to the back and of that 90% the rear axle diff sends 50-90% to the left rear)
of course just a guess ... who knows in real life without precision testing haha
to add to the legacygt.com post - the new forester has an X mode + CVT ... so that post needs some updating :D
Have checked with the technicians at work, AWD on all Subaru models follow the same basic principles: power is transferred to and from wheels which the various sensors find are slipping and losing traction, or need it most. Turning left will favour the front-right wheel etc. This is always operating, and is thus 'active' (compared to some other AWD systems which are really just 2WD and react when needed).
Cambo: Have checked with the technicians at work, AWD on all Subaru models follow the same basic principles: power is transferred to and from wheels which the various sensors find are slipping and losing traction, or need it most. Turning left will favour the front-right wheel etc. This is always operating, and is thus 'active' (compared to some other AWD systems which are really just 2WD and react when needed).
subaru is full time 4wd. power is fed to all wheels all the time. others are part time 4wd. power is fed to rear wheels when the computer determines.
i am not sure why the mechanic calls it active. probably a sales ploy. all cars that have computers are active!
"turning left will favour front right wheel" this means nothing. turning left ALWAYS requires the right wheels to rotate faster. 4wd or 2wd or wd the same. otherwise the car will not turn properly. hence if you "lock the diff" when driving normally the diff will break (not to mention the tyres will chew down like chewing gum).
there is however something called torque vectoring where the computer knows the car has a tendency to understeer, so when you are cornering the computer will actively feed power to the outside rear wheel to create a tendency to oversteer to balance the understeer. of course, the car will not lose control as the computer integrates vehicle dynamic stability (or equivalent) to do just that.
as far as i'm aware subaru does not employ such torque vectoring computing. audi RS cars and nissan juke and some other high end cars i'm sure, do that.
The 3rd gen rav4 has 4WD that only activates when it is needed, although you can lock it for speeds under 40km. So 99.9% of the time it is 2WD. Also it is relatively economic to run abut 8l/100km with a 2.4 litre engine . There is however a new rav4 that has just come out which will have a smaller engine, just a 2 litre and will be be economic to run. But apparently the towing capacity is only about 500kg, which is less that the yaris. Athough I think there is also going to be a V6,
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