Winter Snow Warning

I live in Anchorage and I've had problems only once since I got my 05 in August. You may recall the time around Thanksgiving when we got like a foot over a three-day period. I got semi-stuck trying to leave my apartment complex, but a couple tries at getting a run at the hill was all it took.

FYI, I have new Blizzaks.

Where you located in AK?

 

If I lived in AK I would NOT have a Prius.

 

Do you have really good snow tires or just the OEM tires? The key it to have tires where there is no slippage if at all possible since slippage engages the TRAC when you least want it.

Several people think the Prius is great in the snow, but those all have very good snow tires.

 

The original post says studded Nokia tires.

 

It recently snowed a few inches around my neck of the woods. I thought the Prius did quite well, actually. I never once felt like I was slipping around or not in control of the car. That said, I can see the potential for problems with large amounts of snow and untreated streets. You'll see those kinds of problems in any vehicle with low ground clearance.

 

Ooops, so much for speed reading. Nevermind.

 

I don't see how this is Prius Specific. It seems this would be the same for any car with a 5" ground clearance and skid plates (or, in the case of the Prius, aero panels) underneath.

I'd assume you're riding up on the snow and lifting the front wheels off the ground. Traction Control or the lack thereof won't do a thing for that once you've jacked the front of the car up.

I had a Blazer with the same problem, except that it took three feet of snow to pack up enough underneath to strand it 'high and dry'.

I wouldn't dispute that the Prius isn't the right tool for the job in deep snow, but that's no different than any other car with similar ground clearance.

 

I agree it is bad in the snow.

Although that may be cured by some bad-nice person snow tires, IMO, this is very reminiscent of the 1970's, where getting "snow tires" was pretty much a necessity.

I admit, I don't want to go through that hassle in the winter, then again in the spring. Maybe Toyota can include better all season's? Then again, if only a small portion of the Prius market deals with snow of any significance, I can see the logic for Toyota using "bare-bones", merely "ok", all season tires...

It is pretty sad that I can say because of traction control, I could have gotten around easier in my summer Mustang with rear wheel drive and summer performance tires... :lol:

 

If you high centered the prius would not the traction control kick in to prevent tire spin? I noticed when I took my car out in our recent 3-4 inches of snow that because it was heavy wet snow the other cars had piled up the snow somewhat in a center "hump". I noticed when this was fairly high the traction control light would flash on and I could hear the snow scraping under the front dam and car bottom. Could this be similar. When the snow get deep I am going to drive my Ford Explorer. Snow clearing is not something we do well in this area we just spread sand on it. Thank goodness they do not use salt! We then wait for it to melt. It is still melting one week later from the last snow.

 

There is a way to temporarily disable the traction control...

Disabling Traction Control
WARNING: The shop manual apparently states in no uncertain terms that this procedure must NOT be used to drive the car as damage to the transmission could occur due to traction control being defeated.
• Follow the sequence below (quickly - within 60 seconds)
• Set Ign switch to ON, not READY (Power button twice, no brake)
• While still in "P" fully depress the gas pedal two times.
• Select "N" fully depress the gas pedal two times.
• Select "P" fully depress the gas pedal two times.
(LCD display will indicate a !Car! in upper left corner of screen)
• Turn key directly to "start" to start the engine (brake+start button)
It forces the ICE to run continuosly and defeats the traction control system. Normal operation returns after turn off and reboot. Unlike EV-Mode this is strictly a diagnostic function and should not be used under normal situations.

 

Seems like there is as much variation in how Prii perform in snow as there is in Mustangs... My first car was an original Ford Mustang (6 banger, 3 on the floor, the only options above straight stock were an outside mirror on the driver's side! and an AM radio, definitely not your high performance Shelby model). Keeping in mind that this is back in the days of bias ply tires and plows that left the last inch of snow on the road, the only way I could get around New Jersey at all in winter was to put snow tires on and pray. As it was, I would start the winter by buying a 50 pound bag of sand to keep in the trunk with the snow shovel, not for spreading but for weight.

The only vehicle I've ever owned that was worse than that Mustang in snow was a Chevy Luv (baby pickup) truck which had virtually no weight on the back wheels when unloaded. I lived in Colorado at the time and wound up storing a load of firewood in the back of the bed all winter so I could get to and from work. I also always got a kick out of driving to work the first snowy day each year and seeing all the new 4WD vehicles in the ditches alongside the roads as a new crop of drivers learned the hard way that all cars have 4W brakes and that the real advantage of 4WD was how slow you could go in snow without getting stuck, not how fast.

Vince

 

The car I MOST got stuck in was my CJ-5 Jeep. The ONLY thing that would stop that car was getting high-centered. The problem was, I got over-confident and tried to go where the snow was deeper than the clearance. But since this usually happened gradually and the car had momentum and would slide pretty well on its under-belly, by the time it stopped I was generally about 20 feet from where the wheels could touch the ground, on an unpaved road that nobody else would dream of driving on. So with no hope of anyone coming along, I'd have to spend the next hour or two shovelling.

I've never gotten stuck in my Prius, because I wait for the roads to be plowed before I drive. It's a low-clearance car, not made for deep snow. If I lived where the OP does, or similar conditions, I'd probably have a high-clearance 4WD and only drive the Prius when the roads were clear.

My bigger concern is ice, and we all agree that on ice the Prius is spectacular.

 

Boxster...what size Blizzaks did you put on your Prius??

Thanks.