China likes big cars, and now cars are getting bigger and bigger, but the flexibility is getting worse and worse, and it is getting harder and harder to drive. But have you ever heard of rearwheel steering? If you want me to say, rear-wheel steering should become a must-have configuration for big cars, and today I will spend two minutes talking about this configuration that was once a million-dollar luxury car.
First of all, what is rear-wheel steering? To put it bluntly, most of the models equipped with rear-wheel steering on the market will have a special rear-wheel steering motor, and the motor pulls the rear wheel with a steering lever to achieve a small range of rotation of the rear wheel. The rear-wheel steering of most models is 6-9 degrees, and it is indeed rare to achieve 10 degrees like the recently launched Denza Z9.
The working logic of rear-wheel steering is that the rear wheels rotate in the opposite direction to the front wheels at low speeds, and the rear wheels rotate in the same direction as the front wheels at high speeds. Don't underestimate these few degrees of rotation, when the rear wheels rotate in reverse, it can greatly improve the flexibility of the vehicle, a Mercedes-Benz S with rear-wheel steering, the turning radius is about the same as that of the Corolla, where the Corolla can make a U-turn, the Mercedes-Benz S can also. When the rear wheels rotate in the same direction, the stability of the vehicle is greatly enhanced. For example, when changing lanes on the highway, as long as you hit the direction, the four wheels are equivalent to "walking in a straight line diagonally".
In fact, rear-wheel steering is not a cutting-edge technology, can you imagine that the Accord in 2024 does not even come standard with reversing radar, but the Accord in 1988 (the third-generation Prelude, Accord coupe version), already has rear-wheel steering?
Some people are about to ask, if rear-wheel steering is really so good, then why are there still so few cars with rear-wheel steering to this day? There is definitely a cost factor here. The cost of rear-wheel steering is tens of thousands, which is astronomical for car companies that save the cost of a few dollars. In addition, for models below the B-segment, it is difficult to find a place to stuff the steering gear due to the size of the model, and even if it is crammed, it will affect the space in the rear and trunk.
Of course, there is another main reason, that is, the rear-wheel steering is a special test of the tuning strength of car companies. I know that when I hear this, someone must be blowing the French system, because in the past, tens of thousands of Fukang had rear-wheel steering, in fact, it was not a serious rear-wheel steering at all, to put it bluntly, it was installed in the rear suspension with rubber cushions, and the vehicle steered through the deformation of the rubber cushions, driving the rear wheels to steer slightly, and low-speed was basically useless, and high-speed could start to function. The idea is very creative, but it is not a high-tech job.
The real early rear-wheel steering is related to the front and rear wheels through the mechanical structure, and the front wheel turns and the rear wheel follows the rotation, which belongs to passive steering, and the actual effect is actually not good. The current rear-wheel steering has long been upgraded to active steering, and the computer will adjust the rear-wheel steering angle in real time through the sensors up and down the whole car, combined with the driving speed, body amplitude, etc.
This will also involve the matching of other functions of the vehicle, such as the fit with intelligent driving and active safety, so why test the strength of car companies, because the rear-wheel steering machine can find a supplier, but what is the effect of use, the strength of chassis tuning is really not possible. So in the early years, it was only possible to see it in ultra-luxury brands like Porsche, or supercars such as Ferrari and Lamborghini. Until the first two years, the cheapest rear-wheel steering model on the market was still the high configuration of the Cadillac CT6, and the guide price was 40-500,000 yuan.
Now, with the rise of domestic new energy, models such as Zhiji L6 and L7 and Xiaopeng X9, which are priced at 30 or even 200,000 yuan, have also begun to be equipped with rear-wheel steering, and even standard. I estimate that there will be more and more cars with rear-wheel steering in the future, after all, the cars are getting bigger and bigger, and the generation is lengthened once at a time, and now the size of the C-class cars has caught up with the previous D-class cars. However, there is one thing to say, not many people used to buy MPV, one of the main reasons is that it is difficult to get started, and it is too cumbersome to drive in urban areas. What do you think?