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or the drive wheels are inserted to front wheel drive with a vehicle with front wheel drive in the front, that front lateral range. Alternative ones in addition are the rear propulsion and the substantially more complex all-wheel drive, with which all wheels of the vehicle are propelled.

The first vehicle with front wheel drive became 1898 ofthe Viennese automobile workshop count & pin built (picture of this vehicle). Such vehicles were manufactured for the first time in series starting from 1931 of DKW.

of pro and cons of the front wheel drive in relation to rear propulsion

with the manufacturing costs of the vehicle

in a four-wheeled passenger car are to engine and transmission usually before the driver (front engine). It liesthus close, and is considered as economical solution to leave the entire drive in the front.

The difficult accommodation of larger engines and the realization of different transmission concepts are unfavorable. That had with the vehicles Volkswagen of the company a use of reverse-feed engines (for transverse installation) and W-engines (longitudinal installation inConnection with all wheel) to the consequence.

In principle production costs of a vehicle with front wheel drive are lower around approximately 15% than a vehicle with rear-wheel drive. This has the following causes:

• Unity mating of the Kardantunnels, the cardan shaft as well as the final drive, whose function (differential) can be taken over by the main gear box in front.
• Simpler construction of the chassis - in particular regarding torsionally stiffness
• saving of a relatively aufwändigen oh construction around load change reactions (e.g. To get Bonanza effect) into the grasp.
• Complete drive unit before the passenger space simplifies the safety passenger space. With tail-driven vehicles an escape tunnel must be planned, in that itself the engine gear unitin the case of a heavy frontal impact shifts without in the Inneraum to penetrate.
• Improves space economics by omission of the final drive, simpler mounting of tank and spare wheel.

when driving through curves

front wheel drive or rear propulsion in a vehicle, means a different driving dynamics: In curves passenger cars bend alsoFront wheel drive with accelerating or gas taking away to the Untersteuern, passenger car with rear propulsion for overriding. Which is rated thereby as pre or disadvantage, lies in the eye of the viewer: On the one hand untersteuerndes if a handling is simpler in curves safe and to control, can drivers, who know to deal with it,a certain fun from overriding gain. With a vehicle with front wheel drive the Vortriebskraft and the curve high-level personnel applies nevertheless to consider a pair of wheels to divide must. The sum of these two forces may not exceed the static friction strength of the wheels, there it otherwise to pushing overthe front wheels comes.

when starting

when starting the emphasis of the vehicle shifts because of the mass inertia dynamically to the rear, it lifts oneself the front and the tail dives. The front axle is relieved and the rear axle is loaded. This happens maximally accordinglythe transferable friction forces of the contact area roadway tire and maximally possible acceleration resulting from it. That leads with a vehicle with front wheel drive to a starting behavior worse in the comparison to the tail-propelled vehicle with "jackrabbit" starts, in particular with very torque-strong engines. Therefore are also some these front-propelled vehicles with oneTraction control equipped. Also in the enterprise with trailers there can be problems. Usually therefore the permissible trailer weight is smaller with vehicles with front wheel drive than with comparable vehicles with rear propulsion.

On a snow-smooth roadway the dynamic Achslasttverlagerung plays a subordinated role, there the maximally effectiveAcceleration is here very small. The rear axle is thus loaded thereby hardly more than in the stop of the vehicle. Here vehicles with front wheel drive have an advantage, since with same vehicle mass by the engine/gear unit present over the propelled axle the axle load of the drive axle is higher, as with vehicleswith front engine and rear propulsion. Vehicles with large load over the rear axle, for example by four bag cement in the trunk, have the same advantage of the more highly loaded drive axle or however vehicles with tail engine as VOLKSWAGEN beetle and Porsche 911. The advantage of the front wheel drive when startingto snow partly reduces or completely disappears, if the trunk of the car is loaded or the vehicle is occupied with several persons, since the axle load in front compared with the rear no longer substantially more largely, which rose slow-acting mass of the vehicle however significantly.

examples of passenger car with front wheel drive

• DKW F1 as first Serienfronttriebler
• all current Volkswagen (except syncro - and/or. 4motion-Modelle)
• almost all competition models of the gulf class like for example OPEL Astra, Ford focus etc.
• all CITROËN PASSENGER CAR models
• all AUDI - models (except quattro)

see also: Topic list vehicle technology