Gen iii snow driving characteristics

From what I have read you have bought some of the best snow tires available. For me the Gen3 traction control has been a little better than the Gen2 and it might be OK for you but I would approach winter with some caution. As you may know the Prius traction control is designed to protect the drive line not to keep you from getting stuck. I think it really depends on how steep the hill is and how slippery the snow is. I would go out and test it several times when the snow comes and find out what it can and can't do. Good luck.

You will probably get some answers from people telling you it is no problem and works great all the time, but they don't live where you do and you have to discover for yourself how it will perform on your mountain in your snow conditions.

 

Sounds like you will be tapping the car's potential if not exceeding it in those conditions. I am running studded tires with aggressive tread. First car with real traction control and it does take a bit of getting use to.
I ran through a parking area after a fresh snow fall and the car did just fine. When I was heading up a hill to get out of the area I had snow coming up over the hood and halfway up the hill it started to bog down a bit so I jumped back into my other tracks (coming down). Got out just fine.
For typical commuting I don't have any problems for mountains climbs, I would be just a little weary.

 

I agree, ECO will give you more control for the first half of the throttle pedal travel which is what you need when it's slippery.

 

One more thought.
Just remember that Prius is a low clearance car. It ain't your old Highlander on that score. I hear some of the snows in upstate NY can get pretty deep.

 

And that is the point. So long as all four wheels have the car's weight resting on them and the wheels are not actually in full, icy dimples, the snow performance is excellent. On glare ice it will actually move in the direction you want it to, albeit slowly. And it takes work to get the car to swap ends; I tried, on about 4" of slippery snow to do it and It Just Wouldn't Go.

But, just like my old '71 VW Beetle of yore, if you get significant snow under the chassis, Stuck you are Going To Be. And the Beetle had more road clearance. If you're expecting to plow through miles of eight-inch snow I'd think twice. You'll want something with some significant road clearance, not a Prius. If, on the other hand, you're traveling on a couple of inches of snow on top of ice or hardpacked snow, you'll do just fine.

I've gotten cars out of some nasty, snow/icy conditions by doing the famous, "rock it back and forth until you get some momentum, then go for it" method. That works better if one can spin the wheels at the extremities of the rocking and, on a Prius, that trick won't work.

It's a mixed bag. Compare a 71 V-Dub, an excellent snow car if there ever was one, and a Gen III Prius. So long as the V-Dub didn't have hard-packed snow under the body pan, one could plow through nearly anything. But if one twitched the wheel on ice the car would try to swap ends. A Gen III Prius won't swap ends and, so long as the wheels don't get stuck in a slippery hole, the traction compares.

KBeck.

 

There is a good post about the Gen3 traction control demo.

Ken@Japan

 

I wish my '04 traction control would have behaved like that. Even with studded tires, it probably would not have made it up an incline like that

 

This is KEY.

I use to live in Ithaca, NY, so I know the snow/ruts/grooves can be rather deep...sometime. All the traction in the world isn't going to help much if the underside of (any car) is dragging on the snow. Packed snow...not as much of a concern. But it it's deep and rutted, then I wouldn't drive. If you feel you must, then I would put some chains in the back just in case.

 

Disturbing? What did you think it was disturbing?

 

'Looked to me like a dusting of light snow on hard-packed snow or ice.

Light car, mediocre tires, slick surface... I'd say it did a pretty good job, ayuh.

 

Yeah, I would say it did a darn good job. I really don't think my 97 Carmy could have done that with snow tires.
If you are expecting more, I don't think the Prius is going to work out for you.

 

Ha. And Double Ha. First, that's not a slight incline: To my eye, that's 5% and pretty steep.

You take any car without traction control like the Prius's and you'll have to forget it. Twenty pounds of sand, salt, and determined chopping with an ice chopper and you'll eventually get your car up there, but not otherwise.

Now, if the guy in the video had hit the bottom of the driveway running with a non-Prius he might have made it up to the top: More likely, he would have gone flying off the driveway at the first turn.

Last winter I snagged my student-driver daughter right after a 5" snow fall. We went and found a couple-acre parking lot without any other cars or obstructions in it. I wanted to get the car to do a donut or two, and, more to the point, to get my daughter to do it, so she could learn about getting into, out of, and what to do when skidding. It wasn't quite hopeless: We could get the car to travel about 25-40 degrees to the line of motion. But if one got off the gas or let go the steering wheel the car would straighten out and fly right instantly. I tried to show her what countersteering was all about, and the dangers of that famous, "The rear end slides to the left; you countersteer; then the rear end slides all the way to the right, you countersteer, etc." Well, countersteering worked, all right, but I had a really hard time trying to get the rear end to pendulum out the other way. It just came in from the skid and did a pretty good job of sticking itself right behind the front end of the car.

I imagine I was trying this on glare ice or a frozen solid lake I might be able to get more action out of the car. But four inches or so of slippery snow didn't faze the thing whatsoever.

Final comment. What may not be obvious from the video is just what the Prius is actually doing. You know anti-lock brakes: If the ground is going by and the wheel's not turning, the brakes unlock so the wheels will turn, then the brakes are reapplied. The idea is that maximum friction occurs at the instant before the wheels start skidding, so the anti-lock system just keeps on putting the wheels through that spot, over and over and over again until the car comes to a halt. During that time, since the wheels are semi-rotating and actually have friction to the surface one is skidding upon, steering more or less works. And the whole system works better than pumping the brakes since, natch, the anti-lock can pump the brakes a heck of a lot faster that you can.

That video shows that the computer-controlled forward traction of the Prius has the same trick in mind. If the wheel starts skidding, you've lost traction, so the computer reduces the torque to the wheel; the wheel gets its traction back; torque gets applied; the wheel starts skidding, rinse, lather, repeat. The guy in the video had, from his report, the gas pedal about half way down and was not modulating it and up the hill he went.

This system is a godsend for idiot ladies/guys all over, since they're the people who floor it when the wheels are spinning and somehow expect that, just because the gas pedal's on the floor and the driving wheels are spinning at a gazillion rpm on ice, that somehow the car is going to move forward faster or something. I do not know; now they're going to look like Masters of Ice instead of being eliminated in some Darwinian fashion .

The only downside of this system is if the car is about 90% stuck in deep snow. With a regular drive car one might do a little skizzing of the tires back and forth to open up a little space for the car to rock in, followed by larger rocking, and, if possible, a lunge that gets the car moving again. But if the Prius senses that the tires are turning without the car moving it'll reduce the torque so the wheels won't turn fast. So, if you do get stuck, you'll be good and stuck; but, short of that, you'll outperform everything else on the road. And go straight, to boot.

Of course, passengers shoving on the front/rear of the car to get it out of a snow bank is still more reliable than trying to rock the car, but that's life.

KBeck

 

Living in North Carolina I worry not about deep snow -- which is not Prius territory anyway -- but icy conditions on highways when I travel north in winter. From last season's experience in Michigan and Ohio in blizzard conditions, I'd say the Prius comes up trumps. The traction control gives feeling of sure-footedness and security. Of course, it's all different if you run into a snow drift.

 

Disturbing? What are you driving, a tank? That was a slick, steep driveway. I've been stuck in less with my Jeep C-J5, even with great snow tires and 4 wheel low. The Gen III Prius performance was impressive. A late Gen II wouldn't do anywhere near as well, and a 2004 Gen II would still be sitting at the bottom.

People have really funny ideas about driving in the winter. There are many ways to get stuck, and deep snow is only one of them. Snow is preferable to ice. Often we will drive on the shoulder of the road just to get more traction if the snow plows have managed to polish the road to a sheen. Wet snow can be a real problem as well. I've had my Jeep stuck in two inches of wet snow going uphill.

The previously posted comments are correct. The new Prius will do as well in snow as any front wheel drive car, but it is still a car, not a truck. Don't expect to wade through deep snow.

Tom

 

Might have been disturbing if there was no ice below the snow--but there was, as the guy who made the video reported in the post ken1784 referenced.

As it was, I agree with everyone who says that video speaks highly FOR the Prius--or at least for good Stability Control systems, which I think are becoming available more and more widely. The ice is what made that particular task hard--and remember that steep inclines for a driver often look shallow through a camera.

 

That video is not of much value. What is needed is a video of the Prius and a couple of other front wheel drive cars of similar weight with normal traction control systems, all using the same tires, going up the same hill several times each for comparison.