hoodedninja22

So I found out that the quattro system can send up to 100% of the power to the rear wheels (I could be wrong, please correct me if I am.) With this potential, at SOME times, it could be rear wheel drive. My question being, how can I lock it in to full power to the rear wheels? Is the quattro system mechanical or electronic? (I figured electronic with it being a 2018 Q5, that seems to be the norm these days, especially since the shifter has no mechanical link to the DCT, that's fully electronic.) Even if it's not the full power to the rear wheels, say 80/20? I want to be able to get this thing sideways on slick pavement (My buddy's Kia Forte could do it easily with traction control off, and that has a lower power/weight ratio than the Q5.) Any help is appreciated.

superswiss

That's not how it works. There are different kinds of Quattro systems. If you have a new Q5 then you have Quattro ultra, which is fwd biased under normal conditions and electronically engages the rear axle when needed via a multi plate clutch. An SQ5 uses a self locking center differential that via gearing forces more torque to the rear axle under normal conditions. 60% goes to the rear. What the 100% to the rear is referring to is the traction based torque distribution and is mostly marketing fluff. In an AWD system if the front wheels have zero grip then all the wheel torque that propels the car forward is provided by the rear wheels as long as they have traction. Basically in most AWD systems torque flows to the wheels that have traction. If the only wheels that have traction are the rear wheels then 100% of the torque goes to the rear. The other wheels are still forced to turn, but if they don't have traction they can't put any torque on the road. There are differences in how it's done based on the kind of differentials and some systems can force more torque to the rear as mentioned above, which is commonly referred to as torque vectoring. Most of today's quattro systems can at least torque vector left to right either by using the brakes or actively in cars with the sport differential. Cars like the R8, AWD Porsches, the new M5 and AMG E63 can actively send a 100% to the rear by decoupling the front axle. The latter two even have a driver selectable 2WD/drift mode that permanently decouples the front axle and makes the car a 100% RWD. A Q5 can't do that. I'll post an Engineering Explained video later that explains the mechanics in a bit more detail

superswiss

Here's a good video that explains how different AWD systems work.