is the prius safe to drive in snow?

Yeah, I'm sure they definitely could be better. Since the person at the tire shop said it wasn't strictly necessary to get new tires right away, I feel okay with waiting a bit. Finances are tight since I'm not working right now and our grocery bill is growing right along with our toddler.

 

Going forward is one thing, Stopping OTOH can be tricky. I am really impressed at how the car handles in snow, but I found that really cold weather makes driving the Prius as a Prius difficult. The engine doesn't shut off, and the batteries are always full. This morning I busted up my just replaced bumper that got smashed by a suicidal Raccoon. The problem is you become reliant on the engine braking and expect the car to slow down, and this morning the car wasn't slowing down like it normally does and there was ice in front of the driveway at work. I had to use the service brakes and well, hit that ice and just slid, no control at all. hit a pile of snow and broke the bumper. It was -15 this morning, the windows frost up real easy, especially with a two year old in the back singing and laughing. Had to have the defrosters on full blast, so our feet were cold. The road I was on is a 25MPH road and usually the engine is completely off all the way to the office, but the past few days the engine is running, even if I turned the HVAC off. I was doing 15 just before I would start to turn into the lot and I had no braking from the motors at all for at least 100 feet before I turned as I normally expect to, and hit the brakes harder than I would have in my truck or other car, and that was the end of it right there. I slid about 15 feet, and had no control at all, even spinning the wheel full right and taking my foot of the brake didn't help, still slid in a straight line.

Overall, the car handle snow well, but it doesn't like cold weather, with the poor mileage it gets from the engine running all the time, the windows always having frost on them, and the way it brakes under normal conditions that you become accustomed to, we would be better off driving a Camry or Accord in the winter, the mileage would be close to the same with better traction and braking.

 

Yeah, I definitely hear you on the troubles with cold weather. It's frustrating to hear the engine running to warm the engine at speeds you know you could be on the electric motor.

On the flip side, I noticed my mpg went down in the heat of summer when I lived in TX due to the a/c running full blast.

 

My first winter with the Prius, at -40 I was getting 28 MPG and the motor was always on. Co-workers with Camry's, Accords, Malibu's, etc, were getting 15-18 MPG in similar city driving

Once I put the winter front on, that all changed. I can get 35-40 MPG under similar conditions, and the car actually warms up. There are numerous threads here on grille blocking, with photos. I strongly recommend you block your grille

 

Here's an article that should be of interest. Winter Weather Warning for Prius Drivers People sliding of the side of hills is not good.

 

I disagree with everything in this post, except the part about the engine running a lot. The engine needs to run more in cold weather to provide heat for itself, the emissions system, and the cabin. As for poor mileage, it is worse than summer mileage, but not anywhere close to that of an Accord or Camry. We average around 40 to 44 mpg in the cold and snow. An Accord or Camry can't do that even in the summer.

Turning to control and braking, the Prius has friction brakes like any other car, and they behave like any other car with good ABS. Friction braking becomes the dominate braking mode in slippery conditions. Regenerative and engine braking only functions through the drive wheels, which means it brakes only on the front wheels. Once the drive wheels start to slip, the control system senses the slip and switches to the standard four wheel ABS friction brakes. This happens automatically and nearly instantaneously. With friction braking the Prius is no different than an Accord or Camry.

With the optional VSC, the Prius becomes an exceptional winter driving car. I've never driven a car that can track through drifts and ice patches as smoothly as our VSC equipped Prius.

On the negative side, there are four areas where the Prius is limited for winter driving:
1) Two-wheel drive - The Prius is a front wheel drive car, not a four wheel drive truck. It has the same advantages and limitations of any front wheel drive.

2) Traction Control - The Traction Control (TC) system on the Prius is very aggressive. It was designed this way because of the tremendous low speed torque of the electric drive motor (MG2) and the need to protect the hybrid drive system. The TC system prevents a driver from "burning" through to dry pavement. The burn-through technique is not good in general, but in some limited cases it can work. In those cases it would be nice to be able to spin the tires. Mostly, though, Traction Control is an advantage and keeps a driver from needlessly spinning. Newer versions of the Prius have less aggressive TC settings, although you still can't spin the drive wheels.

3) Ground clearance - The Prius sits pretty low to the ground. Don't expect to wade through deep snow like you can with a Jeep.

4) Rocking - The HSD is very much like an automatic transmission, and as such, makes it harder to rock a Prius than a car with a manual transmission. Mostly this is a matter of technique. To rock a stuck Prius, the driver needs to quickly shift between R and D while maintaining pressure on the accelerator. It works, but feels unnatural to a driver accustomed to a "normal" transmission.

This is probably a good point to stop and talk about physics and physical limits. There are limits to what any vehicle can do with limited traction. New owners of four-wheel-drive (4WD) vehicles often find this out the hard way. Four-wheel-drive may allow you to accelerate faster on snow, but it doesn't slow you down any faster or overcome the laws of physics around corners. I've been there a number of times with my 4WD cars and trucks. Slippery is slippery, and there is nothing you can do about it if it's too slippery other than to slow down, or better yet, don't drive. I've driven my Jeep through five foot drifts of powdery snow, and yet I've had the same Jeep stuck in four inches of wet stuff or on glare ice. It is silly to over-generalize about winter driving.

For winter driving, tires are a big issue, especially with the Prius where the stock OEM tires are not great. I highly recommend better tires for anyone having trouble with winter traction.

All this boils down to this: If a person can't drive a Prius in the winter, they either need better tires or better driving skills, or maybe both.

Tom

 

Hi All,

Well we had some snow here in Chicagoland the past two weeks. And while it was mostly plowed or traffic was so slow it did not matter how good the car was, there was one telling instant. I pulled over into the unplowed lane of an off-ramp following a pickup truck. Nobody was using that lane, so we were 1 and 2 at the light up a slight grade. Other cars pulled in after us. At the green the pickup pulled away from me about 30 yards up to 40 mph. Traction control was going all the time. Then I noticed it was a 4X4, and looked in the mirror. All the other cars , even in the plowed lane, were 75 yards back.

This was with Michelin Hydroedge in excess of 42/40 PSI (were set at 20 F, and it was just below freezing for this ).

Still do not think the Prius is as good as the Saturn SL2 traction control. But it works fine. Just do not try to floor a V8 level of torque at low speeds on snow.

 

Hi acdii,

Well, ice is ice, and there is nothing anybody is going to able to do for you if you hit it going too fast. I have had several circumstances where I have found myself in that situation.

The last instance I saw the unplowed road I was trying to pull onto so I got down to 3 mph before I turned onto it. Did not help, as there was glazed ice under the snow. I slid right into a curb, which smashed the right front steel wheel, but did not deflate the tire. I tried pumping the brakes (this was a Ford Tempo, without ABS), tried vectroring the wheels and gunning it, no effect. As I was at 3 mph I had like 20 seconds of slding as I turned into the oncoming traffic lane in case there was some slipping (and there was) to maximize the diagonal distance to the curb. Eventually with a few seconds before hitting the curb, I just turned the wheel to hit the curb as square as possible, with the thought of sacrificing the wheel to avoid damage to the car. Which is what happened. One might think the car would have pinwheeled, but no, there was ice on curb too, and the car wheel just scuffed along until the car ricoched aligned with the direction of the lane. And I just drove very slowly to my desitnation down this road.

 

Hi larry,

You know this organization that published this article is a group of lawyers out trolling for clients to keep themselves busy, right ? Kinda like that bank robber - "I rob banks because that is where the money is". They do lawsuits against Toyota because that is where they think the money is.

 

When I was growing up in Minnesota, I was told that the reason that "all 4-wheel drive" vehicles had a winch on the front bumper was so that they could get themselves out of ditches... since invariably, new 4x4 drivers would end up IN ditches.

Or, as a neighbor put it, "4 wheel drive just means you now have 4 wheels spinning on ice, which doubles your chances of losing it"

 

What makes it worse is the fact that the Saturn I mentioned doesn't have traction control and still does better..

 

I am starting my fourth year with my 2005 Prius with the VSC package and I found it interesting to read all of these comments.

I have a feeling that many of those who experienced problems just don't have the VSC installed on their vehicles or they may not have the driving techniques to handle ice and snow.

My own experience has been wonderful with this car. I drove to Yakima - Seattle - and back to Camas last week and had no problems in any of the ice and snow that I encountered. I slowed down in the bad spots - put the chains on when they were required by WADOT and never had trouble or scary moments. (Other than those caused by other drivers.)

If your vehicle doesn't get that little snowstorm on the road emblem when the temp is below 39 then you don't have VSC. (My wife calls it the campfire! )

One item that has made a huge difference is that I put new tires on this year that are high rated All season tires. Even on the solid ice I was finding that the tires had some grip.

Techniques to remember:

Slow Down!

NEVER 'gun' it when you are in slippery conditions (once the tires break traction on ice you won't get that traction back easily.)

Use your 'B' gear when you know that you are on ice or when going down hills where you may encounter ice. You may lose mileage but control is more important than mileage.

Don't touch your brakes! When you do you are breaking traction - use the 'B'....

SLOW DOWN! Out of the four accidents that I observed on this last trip three were caused by people in four or all wheel vehicles speeding along until they discovered curvy roads are different than straight roads and/or they could not maneuver around slower vehicles. The fourth accident was a woman in a suburban who discovered that talking on the phone and driving on ice don't mix even if you have snow tires! (She drove into the back of the gravel truck. "But I just had snow tires put on!")

Be safe out there!

 

I have had no problems with driving in the snow. Most of the issues either involve other drivers "driving too fast for conditions, while talking on their cell phones" or the infamous "Pothole" some of them in Wisconsin can swallow you whole.

Mu Prius with the supposed junk OEM tires just survived 13 plus inches and I lived to tell about it. You just need to take your time.

Just my .02 worth

 

Hi Larry,

I doubt this highly. As I said in the first half of the the quote, the other cars were 75 yards behind us. That is the difference between Prius traction control, and a Saturn SL2 without traction control.

 

[quote)

If your vehicle doesn't get that little snowstorm on the road emblem when the temp is below 39 then you don't have VSC. (My wife calls it the campfire! )



Our 2007, Option 6, has VSC. We do get any "snowstorm on the road emblem, wherever that would be, when the temp is below 39 degrees or below any temp.

VSC should work at any speed not only at colder temps. If we get a VSC icon on the dash it means it is not working properly

 

Correct. The snowflake was on earlier Prius. As you said, VSC works in all driving conditions: wet, dry, hot, cold.

Tom