I have a 2010 Mazda3 and was wondering if both wheels are propelling the car. I have heard that some front wheel drive cars only have 1 wheel moving it.
There are differential gears that proportion the power between the two based on relative speed. When going around a corner, the outer wheel needs to be pushed a little faster than the inner one and the differential takes care of this. An unfortunate side effect is that on ice, the wheel that starts spinning gets the most power worsening the situation.
I have never heard of any front wheel drive car that uses only one wheel to move the car. Its both wheels that are getting power and turning to move the car. I mean think about it if it was 1 wheel doing all the work the tire would need to be replaced a lot more because its doing the work load by itself.
no there is no such car with only one wheel moving. If that were true, the car would always move to one side when accelerating. If only one right wheel was moving the car, the car would move to left when accelerating. They might think only one wheel is moving the car if they're stuck in snow and only one wheel moves. that's normal because every car has a differential. a differential allows both of the driven wheels to travel at different speeds when turning. You need both wheels turning at different speeds while turning because when going through a turn, both wheels travel different distances. the wheel on the outside of the turn has to travel further than the wheel on the inside of the turn. So the differential allows the outside wheel to turn faster than the inside wheel. If the diffential didn't exist, then the inside wheel would have to skid to keep up with the outside wheel. This would be uncomfortable and cause more tire wear. So that's what a differential is for. Bad thing about open differentials (the kind that is on most cars) is that when your stuck, they transfer almost all power to the wheel with less grip. So when your stuck, the wheel with more grip has more resistance to turn, so the differential will send the power to the wheel with less resistance and grip. that's why only one wheel spins. So to get unstuck you have to give that wheel that's spinning more grip by putting some salt, or sand under the wheel. Or try to dig the wheel out.
