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This suprised me. How can a brand like Honda which always stood for decent cars and reliability, mess up on this?
Check it out yourself and let me know what you think!

http://www.carthrottle.com/attention-all-honda-owners-your-4x4-crv-might-not-be-a-4x4-after-all/

Not shocked by this in the least. I seem to recall the "4WD" system in the original CR-V took several seconds to engage, which when you're facing a sudden change in friction on the road, could mean the difference between a normal drive and an accident.

I'm not a fan of "automatic" 4WD/AWD systems that don't permanently put at least SOME power to ALL wheels ALL of the time. Or at least have a switch to allow you to lock it in 4WD mode if you know the weather is going to be bad.

Yeah, Honda 4WD systems have been like that for ages, old MDXs and CRVs used to do all kinds of fun things like getting stuck in people's driveways because the front wheels hit some ice

It'd be interesting to know how/why that's happening. I was under the impression that this was the perfect situation for the rear wheels to engage on cars that have this sort of setup.

Here is the link to the English version of the Teknikens Värld article that includes Hondas reply.

As I understand it basically their AWD system have a rather low limit on the amount of torque the rear will take which as it turns out is less that what it takes to get the car moving at that angle, and at some point the differential clutch overheats and that's the point where the cars rolls backwards.
Why exactly the limit is set that low Honda doesn't say but I guess it's a cheap system and they set it like that for warranty reasons or something, which is why they could fix the old version with a software update.

Other AWD systems would also fail at this test if they didn't use the brakes to slow down the low grip wheels e.g. Audis with a center Torsen differential.

My Peugeot would do fine in that test but if the rollers where on one side of the car, it would also have problems.