The New Ford Raptor Has Both 4WD & AWD… How Does That Work?

Have you ever seen the marketing for a vehicle as being either AWD or 4WD and wondered what the difference was? Perhaps you thought the terms were interchangeable. Well, if the goal is spitting out power to all four tires, wouldn’t the vehicle naturally be all-wheel-drive AND four-wheel-drive? Well, that’s not necessarily true. Instead, with a 4WD vehicle, all of the tires are being spun at the same rate but, with an AWD vehicle, the front and back wheels can be spun at different rates, allowing them to be better for street use, allowing the vehicle to not lock up when it goes around a turn.

Well, just to make things even more confusing than they already were, the new Ford Raptor has both of these technologies in place, allowing the driver to switch back and forth between 4WD and AWD as they should please, making the truck accommodate just about any driving condition that the person behind the wheel should get themselves into. Something tells us that this little tidbit will probably make some Raptor drivers push their trucks farther than they probably should but hey, I guess that’s what they were designed for, right?

Check out the video down below as our helpful host over at Engineering Explained gives us the rundown on what all of this means and how the truck goes about bringing both of these systems to life in one refined package. After watching something like this, is the ability to switch between the two something that you now couldn’t live without or do you think that it’s just something added that’s truly unnecessary for the driving experience with a truck like this?