Off Road Assist With/Without?

Pitter

Pitter
Contributor
:
2020 CX-5 Signature Azul Metalico
I purchased my Signature one model year before the Off Road Assist became available. I've read that it's sort of a rear differential lock. So what am I missing and can I live without it or do I need to turn my almost new car in for the new version?
 
Turn off your TC when going off road and its close enough to the new programming. Its a tweak to the braking system to lock wheels from spinning when in tricky low traction situations. Not even close to being worth trading in a 2019 for a 2020 for this feature alone.
 
We've talked about this before. I bought my car in Colombia another poster bought his in the Philippines. They are registered as 2020 models despite the fact they predate the US 2020 models.
 
agreed. I'm not sure it has the same unction or programming as with the off road assist, but i tried deactivating the TC in my '19 gtr on the snow. Little improvement over having it on. I think the AWD system itself is good enough to recognize snow conditions.
 
It may seem counterintuitive but with models not having off-road assist... turn off TCS and leverage the brakes (slight braking) to force power transfer from the wheels that spin to the wheels with grip.
 
It may seem counterintuitive but with models not having off-road assist... turn off TCS and leverage the brakes (slight braking) to force power transfer from the wheels that spin to the wheels with grip.

That can be helpful on some older vehicles or RWD vehicles with mechanical parking brakes before brake override systems became ubiquitous following Toyota's unintended acceleration fiasco in 2009.

"Brake override system

If the brake pedal is depressed with the accelerator pedal depressed, the vehicle can be stopped safely by closing the throttle valve. As a result, the brake operation takes priority over the accelerator pedal operation." -
Mazda service information
 
Acording to the video link, Dave from Mazda mentions that there are two ways to achieve traction control, one by the reduction of the engine speed and the other by the brakes applied to the spinning/slipping wheels, so that the power can be distributed to the non slipping wheels instead. When we do not do any thing and the wheels start spinning Mazda, first of all just reduces the engine speed to gain traction, but it does not help in some situation, for e.g. as when two diagnol wheels are spinning/slipping. In that situation if we, push the button marked traction controll off, it only cuts off the engine speed reduction part of the traction controll. The spinning wheel braking part of the traction controll is still active and it takes over to stop the wheel slippage and there by re distributes the power to the wheels on the ground which help to pull the car out. This is how I understand it but some one needs to try that in a CX5 from 2017-2018 to see if it works.
 
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