Best AWD EV or hybrid in snow?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
They don't "not work," you just need to charge them more in the winter than you do in the summer. Do you think gas cars don't work for city driving because they get worse mileage in town than on the highway? |
Anonymous
|
AWD Toyota Sienna minivan. Only comes in hybrid now.
We live in Colorado and have owned lots of different SUV’s. My kids ski raced for YEARS and the AWD Sienna (ours predated the hybrid availability) with good winter tires outperformed everything. |
Anonymous
That’s great to hear! Do you ever have issues with clearance? We get huge snowbanks created by plows, and they are often compacted like cement, so we need clearance to go over them. |
Anonymous
| I bought the new Jeep Wrangler PHEV. It gets about 25 miles on a charge. It's perfect b/c I live in the city and it's great in snow. |
Anonymous
There have maybe been one or two times where clearance has been an issue. My husband got a lift on his 4Runner last summer at a place in Denver that specializes in Toyota modifications and I half jokingly asked the guy if they’d ever lifted a Sienna. Sadly they don’t offer that service. The 4Runner is comparatively lousy in snow, even when DH had studded tires. Our street at home rarely gets plowed so we don’t get those snow banks (on the rare occasion when the city does plow they push it to the top of our cul de sac where it doesn’t block any driveways) and if it’s deep I just wait for DH or the neighbors to drive through the snow first. One time up in the mountains we were leaving for a ski race and it had been snowing for a couple of days—I shoveled when we got to our cabin (we used to rent a place for the season), then shoveled before bed, then got up and shoveled before the kids woke up. The street hadn’t been plowed but a couple of people in large pickup trucks had driven down the street and out of our neighborhood so I just gunned it out of the driveway and drove in their tracks. Made it to the race and it was canceled because there was too much snow for them to set the course. We saw so much crazy on I-70 that day but the kids and I just chugged along in the Sienna. Again, we’ve only owned the gas Siennas, (2011 and 2018–got the second one because the first one was totaled by baseball sized hail) since the hybrid just came out recently. |
Anonymous
|
I have a Tesla model 3, I live in Chicago, and I drive it every weekend in January to Wisconsin to take my kids to their beginner ski class. It's completely fine, if I leave with an 80% charge im back around 25%. Recharges fully overnight.
one time I forgot to charge the night before and I departed at 60%. I probably would have made it home okay but to be safe I stopped by an outlet mall on the way home and supercharged while I bought ski socks from the Eddie Bauer outlet store (basically, charged on the way home while I knocked out an errand I needed to do anyway) |
Anonymous
|
I owned four four wheel drive vehicles
My current one a GMC Acadia Denali is good in regular snow. But really it is not an off road vehicle. More of a SUV with a car like ride. My old GMC Envoy was last GMC SUV built on an actual Truck Frame. Much heavier, tough and great in deep snow but thing a big gas guzzler. My Jeep Wrangler good in snow, great on beach, but not really a real off road vehicle or deep deep snow. My 1976 Jeep CJ7 with a lift kit, push bars, V8, tow bar it road like a bucking Bronco, very uncomfortably to drive. But in very deep snow, off road on trails, on beach was amazing. 8 actually had it at 60 mph on beach one and I drove it in the DC Huge Blizzard of 1996 at height of blizzard at 50mph. It could drive in a few feet of snow. Bottom line vehicles great in snow off road are not fun to drive On paved roads on sunny days |