I have spent the last 5 days driving on an inch of ice on the roads and now a Dallas Texas snow storm. My white Prius earned the "Blizzard" in it's color and I passed many an AWD and truck spinning their wheels on a hill or at a stop sign.
Perfect picture. BTW, I have similar good experiences in the snow/ice with my Gen II Prius. But I'm pretty sure that those trucks and SUVs I see having trouble in the snow are not 4 or all wheel drive vehicles. Instead, they're 2 wheel, rear wheel drive vehicles -- the worst for snow/ice traction.
Does this count? This was my avatar for awhile: I can dig up some more, but first I want to get the video completed of our blizzard this week (with the Prius featured in some shots)
Agree with you 100% I was probably a little glib. The AWD drive I saw having trouble was a Ford SUV with low profile wheels and all four wheels were spinning away trying to go up a hill - unreal. The trucks spinning away were probably 2 wheel drives - SUVs and pickups.
Most of the time, when I see vehicles in the ditches here in Minnesota, it's pickup trucks and SUV's as well. As an example, last weekend all 16 vehicles in the ditch on Interstate 35 were trucks/SUV's. They were either 2wd, or, if they were 4wd, I'm betting they hadn't shifted into 4wd yet. Moreover, all but one of them was full-size. I'm not going to knock trucks/SUV's because I own a full-size 4wd for towing purposes. But I do hate driving around in 2wd when the weather is borderline. As an example, driving a 200 mile stretch of I-35, there was only a single 5 mile stretch that decided to have freezing drizzle--just enough to catch people by surprise and put them in the ditch. The rest of the drive round trip was good to excellent driving conditions. In my humble opinion, front wheel drive is far more predictable and safer than 2wd (or a 4wd still in 2wd mode).
Sometimes I worry to stick a sticker to my Prius, you proved that obviously Prius have ''no limitations''
We're pretty well snowless here in the upper midwest. Rather an unusual year, warm and hardly any snow. We were expecting a cold and snowy winter (farmer's almanac etc...) and based on the fact we had sub freezing temps the first week of Sept. (which was a bit early for that).