Hows the prime in winter and heavy rain?

16 inches last tuesday

So I didn't drive tuesday.

 

Hi all,
We have a little snow here in Norway and I'm happy to report the Prime performs admirably in such adverse conditions.
The temperature in our country can dip to below -50 centigrade in certain parts and the snow ploughs don't come around every day.
Turning on the pre-heater in the morning by remote keyfob is a godsend and the cabin soon heats up to a toasty temperature even without firing up the engine.
Battery range does however take a hit as instead of getting over 60 Km you'll be lucky to hit half that in Winter.
Studded tyres are of course a must if you don't want to get stuck!
In fact I have yet to deactivate the traction control so far - it's that good at handling these conditions.
I thought my previous Prius was good in Winter but the Prime is even better.
Only thing you need to be a bit wary of is ensuring that the camera and sensors are clean or else she will let you know about it

 

I'm wondering about this now. Live in NJ where it only snows badly a couple of times during the Winter. I don't plan on using the Prime on heavy snow days. Maybe I'll just stick with all seasons

 

Greetings; I live in Maine.

Most of our snow storms give us 4 to 6 inches of snow. I have been driving a Prius since 2011. It handles great in anything up to about 8 inches of snow.

Here in our town, we also get a lot of black ice on the road. So everyone shifts to studded winter tires every October. With studded winter tires driving on ice is fine.

 

The Prime's main snow limitation is its low ground clearance. If the snow isn't deep, it'll be like every other front wheel drive car.

Tire grip depends on the tires. I don't think any original equipment tires are spec'ed to be optimal on snow. No all-season tires are very good on ice. Buy real snow tires if the need is there.

I want the tire pressure sensors especially on this car with no spare. I want to know when the tire is beginning to lose air so I can do something (get towed or add the sealant goop) before I've driven on the flat and destroyed it.

 

I agree 100%.

 

Good to know the EV range drops when cold... as expected



Thanks for the great pics Tonya!

 

It depends. If your town/city is great on snow plow on those few snowy days, and you don't plan to drive your car out into snow country, you can do without dedicated snow tires. I lived near Boston for over ten years, but never had snow tires on any of our cars. Now, we moved to more North and rural New England, I do feel better with dedicated snow tires on vehicle we drive during winter. That said, I did not have dedicated winter tires on my previous Gen3 Prius for the first two winters. I also did not have dedicated winter tires on our current PRIME for the first winter. However, for the second winter season for my PRIME this year, the OEM Dunlop was down to 5/32, not good enough to handle the snow this winter, so I put on Michelin Xice on just yesterday. I am glad I did, for we just had season's first accumulation. If you decide to keep all season tires during snow, rule of thumb is that you need at least 6/32 inch of tread to have adequate stopping ability.

 

The original question also asked about heavy rain. No problem. Tire traction depends on the tires, mainly the tread depth, also the tread rubber compound and tread design.

There is no inflection point about needed tread depth for avoiding hydroplaning. As the tread wears the risk of hydroplaning or sliding when braking is pretty much a falling straight line graph. The legal minimum depth of tread of 2/32" is ridiculous. I use 4/32" as my minimum (which is also the ridiculous legal minimum in snow in this state).

I'm interested in the new Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady all-season tires. They seem to get very good reviews for both wet and snow performance. These would be for the CX-9, not the Prime. For us, the Prime gets run-flat Bridgestone DriveGuard, which are not very good in winter. (Note that Goodyear has a half-dozen Assurance tires of various models. Some are not so great. I'm looking only at the WeatherReady.) For winter our Prime wears Michelin X-Ice xi3.

 

I mentioned those to our son, he's in a (Mazda) CX-7, and reluctant to spring for extra rims, and the whole snow tire hassle.

 

Heavy rain is fine, but the fastest setting on the wipers isn't quite fast enough. It seems slower than other cars. A rear wiper would help, but otherwise everything is fine. In EV mode you could drive underwater without hydrolocking the engine (but you'd probably ruin the electrical system.) I think I'll Rain-x at least the back windshield to keep it clear.

The car drives OK in the snow, but there are some things about it that don't seem to be designed for cold weather. Here are my observations:

• There is no way to park the wipers where the heat from the defroster can reach them. On my other Toyota if I switch the wipers on and off very quickly the wipers would stop on the bottom of the clear part of the glass. On the new 4runner and many Subarus there is a heater strip where the wipers park.
  
• There doesn't seem to be a heater on the forward collision camera, so heat from the defroster takes longer to clear that part of the glass.
• The low clearance, underbody panels, and other aero features could be a problem in deep snow. Every time there's a big snowstorm I see plastic underbody panels littered around the streets after.
• On plowed roads it does well. I have snow tires, and the handling on snow is well-controlled. I did some testing in a parking lot, and it was hard to get the rear end to slide out (oversteer). Usually it would just understeer which is less scary.
• The traction control and stability control is well-behaved and works well. I'll have to test how well it deals with one wheel having no traction at all. On my Toyota 4runner it will pulse the brakes to simulate a limited slip differential, and it works even if one wheel is in the air.
• The heat pump heat is pretty weak in cold temperatures, and it uses a lot of battery power. Might as well run the engine if you need to defrost the windshield quickly. Pre-conditioning helps, but it usually only melts the lower part of the windshield.
• In the winter the remote AC or pre-conditioning should be smart enough to run the rear/mirror defroster and seat heater.
• The controls (buttons, etc) are a little hard to use in ski gloves. The 4runner has great chunky controls that could be used with huge gloves.

I haven't driven in bad enough snow to know how the headlights do in rime ice conditions. Since they are LED they might not put out enough heat to melt ice. And I wonder if a layer of ice would affect the radar? If so, that should be heated too. I also haven't seen if the wheel wells pack full of slush and ice.

I went for a hike in the mountains after a snow storm a few weeks ago. The road to the trailhead was snowpacked, but I had no problem. Shortly after I parked, a 4runner tried to drive up to where I was. Both wheels on the driver's side started spinning (so it was in 4WD), and they started sliding into the ditch. They had to back down a bit and turn around.

 

My first Subaru didn't have this heater strip, and the low wiper parking position turned into an icing problem. So I pulled the wipers off their spline shafts, and reset them one spline tooth higher, moving the park position high enough to reach a portion heated by the normal defroster vents. This helped, without causing a problem on other end of the wiper sweep.

My second Subaru has the heater strips, so no adjustment needed. I believe my prior cars parked the wipers within reach of the defroster vents, but didn't look around to confirm.

 

A heat pump is very inefficient and ineffective at low temperatures. The engine is needed for heat.

A coat of polymer sealant (auto body wax, but not real wax) helps keep the headlights free of snow, ice, grime. The radar under the egg & halo emblem will get caked with snow and it stops working. You'll get a warning. Polymer sealant is also a help here.

4wd is great if the tires grip. If they don't grip, you got nothin'. I've done a lot of winter travel with fwd and good snow tires, and I've gone anywhere I wanted unless I high-centered on deep snow.

 

For stopping, yes, the 4WD has no advantage. Only the tires matter.

For going, without a special differential or modern TCS, a 2wd is stranded the moment a single drive wheel starts spinning. A 4wd will keep going until that happens at each drive axle.

 

Another problem is if you're stopped a while in heavy wet snow then it sticks to the various collision sensors and your car beeps periodically until you go in and disable all the anti-collision and parking clearance sensors (I had to do this last week in the Thursday storm),

 

They should put washer fluid jets on the sensors. And on the backup camera while they are at it.

 

I have my Prime since 2017 and have gone through 2 winners so far with it. Had a lot of snow and cold weather and I had no problems driving with winter tires in heavy snow conditions. I live in Upstate New York outside of Syracuse New York where we get a lot of snow.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

That sounds really complex/expensive. If it's just for icing up, maybe just some sort of "heat tracing", ie: a keep the element slightly warmed with an electrical resistor might work.

 

Beautifyl! Wish you can send snow here in California

 

We are supposed to get snow in the Sierras this week. And rain to clear the smoke out of the air and help put out the fires. You know it's bad when you go out to the street to get the mail, and come back in choking. That happened to me a couple of days ago.