Traction control procedure

Uh ... is there an advantage to defeating this feature?

 

Thanks for that response.

If you go through the procedure you outlined to defeat the traction control, can you re-activate it while on the move?

IIRC, other cars I've owned had on on/off button on the dash which would seem to offer the driver more flexibility than perhaps we have on the v. At this point I'm not personally concerned but others might be.

 

Yesterday I was trying to get up my driveway, with four inches of wet snow, for the first time in my new, 2013, Prius v. The driveway is slightly steep. I have a BMW 535xi and it gets up with no problem on all-season tires (with even more snow). I have an STi which has no issues.
I have driven other people's cars up our drive when they could not. In almost every case theirs was a FWD car. I had NO luck with the Prius. In fact, as mentioned earlier, the car seemed to "just stop", and did nothing. No tire-spin, no nothing. This is normal in snow? What to do? Try the procedure of turning off the TC? I believe I switched it to "power" mode and it didn't help.

 

Even if it worked, personally, I wouldn't do it. I care about my transaxle.

From can you disable the tration controll? | PriusChat

The price tag is in the multi-kilobucks and it's warranted normally for at least 5 years/60K miles. I wouldn't want to damage it by doing something that you're not supposed use for driving the car.

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Your STi and 535xi are AWD. You may have better luck backing up the driveway...​

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Duh, I know what my cars are. What good is my brand-new car if it has to sit when other crappy FWD cars can get up the drive?
I'm going to try my STi's snow tires on it and if that does not work, after I blow up the drive system trying, then I'll be building a bonfire under it.
You are right, I might have better luck backing up. I'll try that after and if the snow tires fail.

 

If anything, I imagine ECO mode would be better than PWR mode in this situation.

 

I have to drive up a fairly steep hill (approximately 17% grade) for about 2/10ths of a mile to get to my residence. It's also very narrow with parking allowed on only one side and a lot of the time it doesn't get plowed or de-iced for some length of time. I have never had a problem driving up this hill with any of my Prii but of course I'm using the excellent studless Blizzak snow tire. Have been using them on all of my vehicles, past and present, for the last 10 years or so. I recommend them highly.

 

Regarding coming to a stop and not being able to continue up a slippery slope, I think it is partly about learning to press harder on the gas pedal. Like how I had to learn to stomp, stay, and steer on the brake pedal (steer with steering wheel) with anti lock brakes, instead of pumping them to avoid skidding. It is just a little scary trusting the vehicle to safely apply more power on a slippery area.

I have gotten stuck on two different ice/snow covered driveways. Both times I could see how from a stop, spinning my tires could have caused me to slide sideways while I created a nice ice path under the tires. Both times I backed up and tried again with a little more initial momentum and a pressing the gas pedal more and got up the driveways in a controlled manner.

I have disabled traction control on my Prius v wagon, just to see if I could. The secret is to press the brake pedal in step 3 while you shift into Neutral. I would only drive without traction control as a last resort, if I couldn't backup and retry or go around the problem area. I think that it is just too easy to over heat or over rev an electric motor or the Hybrid Synergy Drive. I remember watching a report on how regular ICE vehicles can do damage to the transmission getting out of slippery situations if it took more than 10 min or involved a lot of rocking back and forth. The damage often would not show up until later. Alas a quick search did not produce any links to reference.

 

What part of HSD is vulnerable to loss of traction requiring Traction Control | PriusChat has discussion of what could be damaged by disabling TCS.

The PDF at Hybrid Synergy Drive Information Terminal (PDF) | PriusChat says

 

Thanks "nelligan". I just wanted to let all know that instructions work on gen 2 prius 2007 (JDM version) means japanese local model, as well. I have read at several places that gen 2 traction system can't be bypassed. I just tried it few mins ago and an icon of red car with "!" mark in the middle is displayed on lcd screen on left top corner.
I havent tried it by driving, but soon might have to, because I'll be visiting an area where two ppl had to give a push to make the car climb a bit of steep slippery part of a hill area on my previous visit.
Thanks again and I'll report back after my next visit about how did it go

 

Hi. Thanks all for the encouragement !
Well, i did visit the same place where i had the traction control troubles i.e my 2007 prius wont climb a steep height due to the traction control kicking in every time the tyre spin.
This time i followed the procedure and turned off the TC. To my surprise , the car climbed nicely and this time the tyres seemed not to spin, or i couldn't notice.
So, i confirm that turning off the TC does make a huge difference and ppl should know about it.