Who's driven 4th gen in the snow?

Yup, over 20%:

 

The foot-operated parking brake in our Prius... is that an e-brake? I thought it was just mechanical with a cable going to the back wheels.

 

e-brake is short for Emergency Brake, not Electrical Brake. It's pretty much conventional, cable activated, except that the mechanism at the rear disk brake is a bit involved.

 

Thanks Mendel. I thought he meant electrical brake. (no sleep last night )

 

Our first test drive, first my wife drove, then we were going to switch. The salesman suggested to put it in park and set parking brake, while we swapped. She had a hell of a time searching for the parking brake (pedal), finally popped the hood.

 

Reading the manual will put you to sleep.

 

That's a hell of a hill! Stairwells and side rails need no explanations!

 

Stock tires suck on ice with very little incline and hard driffs and trac control is on u aint going anywhere. Trac control will get u stuck. I had to turn it off to get unstuck

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Mad, Thanks, that's something I couldn't do in the gen 2. The traction control saw any wheel spin and it removed power. I'll have to look how the traction control gets turned off.

 

Unlike gen 2 and 3, turning off traction control on the 2016 is readily accesable, ie: it's condoned by Toyota. From Owner's Manual, nice to see there's an actual button:

 

Same procedure in every Toyota I've owned with traction control. Yaris, Rav and Prius.

 

Previous generations of the Prius had no such button - the only way to disable traction control was to enter maintenance mode. This required pressing up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, and finally start. No, wait, that's the Konami code...

It actually required shutting down the car, setting the parking brake (well, really, that's only necessary while in neutral (and only if the car isn't otherwise restrained - it could roll during the part of this that's done in neutral) but might as well set it before time-sensitive parts of the procedure), and then completing all of these steps within 60 seconds: pressing start twice without pressing the service brake (to select ignition on), fully depressing the accelerator twice, shifting to neutral (which requires depressing the service brake), fully depressing the accelerator twice, engaging park, fully depressing the accelerator twice, and then pressing start while pressing the service brake (to select ready).

Also, it's not the emergency brake, it's never the emergency brake. Sure, it's an option in an emergency, but thinking of it as the emergency brake will make you think it's only for emergencies, which is not the case. It's the parking brake, and it's meant to be used to provide redundancy with the transmission's park pawl, while also avoiding the shock of the car rolling against the park pawl.

 

I figure if Toyota doesn't provide a convenient button or MFD option to disable traction control, it's for a good reason, and using Easter Egg bypasses can net you a toasted transaxle. I appreciate on 2nd gen the traction control is too quick to shut you down, but I find it ok on our 3rd gen.

I don't see the assumption that disabling TC on 4th gen is automatically going to improve things; would reserve that tact for last resort.

 

And, really, that is what I'd use TC OFF for - a last resort to avoid having to tow the vehicle out of a situation.

Worth noting that Toyota tends to be very conservative about this kind of thing - being a dumbass and sitting there and flooring it while you've got a wheel spinning is a great way to blow up a differential, so Toyota in the past didn't let you do that. Now, however, they appear to allow you to do that if you want, because you have to be able to do that to be able to rock the vehicle properly.

 

Long time lurker first time poster...Huge snow storm in Nevada (I-80) and drove thru several storms with zero issue. Snow plows did their thing but the road was still slippery. I never lost control. I drove about 10 under the posted limit.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

How did the car behave in the turns and when changing lanes if you had to. What tires did you have? If you have a video from that trip it would be interesting to watch.Thank you.

 

No vids. So there was a chain of about 10 cars behind 2 big rigs. I passed them all going about 50 to pass them traveling about 35. Turns thru the mountain were cake but I wasn't going to push it. Definitely drives better than my Mazda 3 that under similar conditions didn't do too well.


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Should have clarified 2015 Mazda 3S Grand Touring with the radar feature.

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But Toyota does provide a button for Gen 4. See your image in post 70.

 

Yes, I know 4th gen has a button to disable traction control; I understand that. I'm just saying it's still debatable: does disabling traction control on the 4th gen improve traction. Just because you're provided the means, doesn't mean it's automatically better.