After about a month, am REALLY impressed with our new ACURA RL,
so I researched it, knowing that Acura is 'top of the line' Honda, and RL is 'top of the line' Acura. Found out RL stands for 'refined luxury', and the SH/AWD refers to Special Handling/All Wheel Drive, which is amazing.
At the time of its introduction, the Acura RL's SH-AWD was the first all-wheel-drive system to vary the distribution of power not only from front to back, but also side to side in the rear using a technique called torque vectoring. The RL can direct up to 70% of available torque to the rear wheels, and up to 100% of that available rear torque can be directed to just one wheel. In combination with a specially designed planetary gear set which can over-drive the rear wheels at up to 5% greater speed than the front wheels, the torque directed to one wheel, or torque vectoring, can have a steering effect. As the car speeds around a curve, torque vectored to the outside rear wheel will push the rear end around the curve faster, just as paddling the outside oar of a row boat faster than the inside oar will cause the row boat to turn, to minimize the understeer common in front-heavy vehicles.
AND, the paddle shifter, if you want more fun than the auto transmission, is really fun, with all that power. Wow, what a car...
At the time of its introduction, the Acura RL's SH-AWD was the first all-wheel-drive system to vary the distribution of power not only from front to back, but also side to side in the rear using a technique called torque vectoring. The RL can direct up to 70% of available torque to the rear wheels, and up to 100% of that available rear torque can be directed to just one wheel. In combination with a specially designed planetary gear set which can over-drive the rear wheels at up to 5% greater speed than the front wheels, the torque directed to one wheel, or torque vectoring, can have a steering effect. As the car speeds around a curve, torque vectored to the outside rear wheel will push the rear end around the curve faster, just as paddling the outside oar of a row boat faster than the inside oar will cause the row boat to turn, to minimize the understeer common in front-heavy vehicles.
AND, the paddle shifter, if you want more fun than the auto transmission, is really fun, with all that power. Wow, what a car...
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