Originally Posted By: doitmyself
Does the need to more carefully manage the tire wear on AWD add a substantial cost to ownership?
No, because if you have permanent AWD, then all 4 tires wear out at about the same rate more or less, so you end up replacing them in sets of 4 anyway.
The only time an issue arises is if you end up damaging one of the tires beyond repair. In that case, you can have it shaved down to the same tread depth as the other 3, but how often does that happen, really?