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I am an electrical contractor and the 4 wire is NOT for redundant grounding!! The 4th wire is a neutral for the newer dryers, although it is bonded to the ground for reference it should NEVER be confused with a ground as it could have voltage at any point in time. If you touch a neutral and are a lesser path of resistance to ground than the path through the panel, the unbalanced load is going through you. Same goes for the new ovens.
For decades the three-wire plug and receptacle was common. Normally the neutral cannot be used for grounding, but an exception was made for dryers and ranges, which dates back to WWII efforts to conserve copper. When this exception was finally removed, the Code handbook even noted it would cause some problems.
Depends on how the house is wired (HHG), if the appliance ever switches to 120v and is not bonded, if you wire it correctly... Need more info to gice you a safe answer other than to have someone who knows what theyre doing handle it.
Most older 240v appliances used 3-prong plugs. So you had hot-hot-neutral. The neutral was used as both a way to have a 120-volts supply available to the dryer.......also the neutral was used to ground the body of the appliance.
Using a neutral as ground is no long acceptable........a dedicated ground, that only conducts current in the event of a fault, is what is now required. So a modern 4-prong plug and the wall connector for appliances that run on 240-volts, have the following configuration: ground, hot, hot, neutral.
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