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Driving in snow

8K views 61 replies 24 participants last post by  Gailjon 
#1 ·
Just wondering what the recommendation is for driving in snow in an EV. In an ICE is drive slowly in a high gear, but you can't do that when you don't have any gears! Any tips?
 
#2 · (Edited)
#6 ·
Drive carefully, don't try and get clever with modes or you'll trip over yourself. You're too busy concentrating on what you're doing that at some point you'll have forgotten you've changed modes or gear settings and you'll catch yourself out right when you don't want to.

The narrower tyres fitted to most EV's will cut through lying snow better than most modern cars.

I'd suggest that if you're that concerned that you'll find yourself out in the snow with no options, get some snow socks from Amazon and throw them in the boot. Or get snow rated all season tyres like Michelin Cross climates. Not sure if they do them in EV car size or not or if you'll like the effect on the range.
 
#9 ·
I'd avoid B mode altogether in snow. Secret is leave huge spaces in front (& behind if poss), accelerate & decelerate super slowly, never brake or accelerate round bends, do all braking on the straights before arriving at a bend, and when braking, if I have cars behind me, I'll touch the brakes without actually applying them, to get the brake lights on & warn the guys behind to do the same, then a couple of seconds later I apply the real pressure to slow myself down. With luck they'll do an actual brake, earlier than I do, and so increase the gap between them & me which is often on the small side to begin with!. Reduces the chances of them rear-ending me. If you've ridden a motorcycle in rain & snow, you'll know the general plan!

And I run winter tyres from Nov to March appx, even in south of England. I see we have snow today, not that I'm going anywhere this year!
 
#12 ·
Well I have just discovered that my Model 3 Performance is crap in the snow. The ABS works well and AWD helps but the wide, low profile tyres have very low traction, even worse than I expected. It is the first car I have had for many years for which I do not have a set of winter tyres on spare rims. Time to rectify that I think.
 
#16 ·
Echoing the winter tyres thing. I've always invested in a cheap set of wheels off eBay for any car I had and put winter tyres on. Even if my car is crummy (my current one is) I have a thing for immaculate wheels so I'd always take them off for snow and put cheap alloys or steels on with winter tyres. Never struggled even with RWD automatics (Vauxhall Omegas)
 
#17 ·
Good winter tyres and gentle acceleration/braking makes a massive difference to keeping control of your own car.

Assume all the drivers around you are on summer tyres and going to drive as if the road is dry and grippy. That encourages you to keep very big gaps, so giving you time to react safely when they lose control.

There are lots of other winter driving tips, but they are mostly finessing around the edges or learning how to get yourself out of trouble.

Learning how to get yourself out of trouble is also very important, but not quite as easy to learn without a demonstration followed by practice in a safe place. I'm very grateful to my dad for taking me to a big empty car park in the snow to learn about skid control when I was still a learner driver. It certainly saved my bacon both times I've been headed for the ditch in wintery weather (the first time was barely a week after our practice session) but learning from a professional instructor in an appropriate setting would have been much safer, and something I'd still like to do one day because I'm sure there's lots more I could learn from them.
 
#19 ·
Make sure you use one that has the kit that the instructor can use a control on hydraulically controlled trainer wheels to lift corners of the car to reduce grip.

 
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#22 ·
Sadly, skid pan training isn't needed for UK driving license. Really bad weather is so rare in England, especially recently, that no-one's going to take the need seriously. In North of England, Wales, & Scotland (where there are some decent hills/mountains) I guess they just grow up learning how to hope with snow, and driving on it is jus another aspect of this. But even there I think it's rare to find people using winter tyres - would be interesting to know the figures! Maybe those in countryside do, those in cities don't?
 
#27 · (Edited)
For context to that comment re being too cold for salt. It works less well at around -5 road temps, then barely works from about -10ish. All figures are approximate and going from memory when dad used to have to decide when to send out the gritters!

Tonight is cloudy and not very cold so there's little more than one degree gradient between road temp and air temp. It can easily be 3, 4 even 5 degrees if it's clear and cold. That's why the frost warning light in cars usually comes on at about 4 degrees.

140139
 
#29 ·
Why so much interest in winter tyres. We get a few cold and snowy days most years, but I have never felt it necessary to change tyres twice a year. Just when do you change them? How? Where? How do you decide when to swap back to normal tyres? Must be a real nightmare if you get it wrong and it snows just after you have gone back to normal tyres. I owned a RWD ICE car many years ago and it was awful compared to more modern front wheel drive. I have followed and had to overtake (very carefully) BMW drivers who simply cannot go in a straight line in the snow.. Some just give up. One of my neighbours with a sporty BMW wont take his car out in the snow - he says its too risky.

In snow, regen in D is fine in the Leaf, the car slows very gently - its nothing like hitting the brake
 
#30 · (Edited)
Why so much interest in winter tyres. We get a few cold and snowy days most years, but I have never felt it necessary to change tyres twice a year. Just when do you change them?
They're not just for snow. They're for winter weather, including mild UK ones.

They have a different "rubber" compound that is generally better grip when average temps go below +7 degrees. Summer tyres go harder while winter or all seasons stay more pliable. There needs to be a bit of flex to provide traction.

They're also designed for clearing water out from under your tyres on wet roads more efficiently than summer tyres, giving you better wet grip.

For snow, it's the sipes that improve grip. It's a gross over simplification but think how well snow sticks to a pair of woolly gloves. That's what that bit of tyre design is trying to replicate.
 
#37 ·
If anyone has ever used a competition tyre - even on a road car - it's remarkable the difference in performance, feel and confidence being on the 'right' tyres can have. Yes it doesn't snow much in the UK but a soft compound winter tyre provides a considerable difference to a car on a cold damp road. A softer compound on a cheap set of steel rims in lower temperatures is money well spent in my opinion. The alternative is to only have one set of tyres which is cross climate but they stand a greater chance of wearing faster in warmer temperatures. It's a compromise to consider based on location, driving habits and weather patterns. I live in Suffolk and it was icy for the past week. I don't need a snow tyre. Someone up thread lives in Inverness, I would be thinking different in that case.

Also, it's not well known that tyres degrade over time. The rubber returns to it's natural state so a tyre should be disposed of after ten years even if it has full tread available. Classic car owners (like me) often fall foul of this as they don't do many miles per year. Again perhaps a reason living in the south of the UK a full snow tyre isn't really worthwhile.
 
#38 ·
Over time it's not so costly running 2 sets of tyres, as each set lasts longer than just 1 set would. My winters go on usually start of November, and back to summers around March. Once we're seeing regular days at 10C or less, or frost suddenl;y arrives, the winters go on. Once I'm happy the frost is gone & spring's defnitely here, the summers go on. You may argue this isn't necessary in UK, especially in the South, and most people down here I think run summers all year round. Buit all it will take is one skid that could have been avoided, to cause an accident costing far more than the small cost of a 2nd set (compared to car's own cost, it' 3% ish). So I prefer not to take the risk of staying on summers, tiny though it is. It's a risk I can reduce, and easily, so I do. YMMV.

CCs are tempting, but suffer lower summer range than full summers, and have less grip in the nasty wet/cold/snow than full winters do. So as I have space in shed to store tyres, I prefer to avoid these two compromises that CCs have, good though they are. My regular long trips northwards are right at the limits of the Bevs I have today, so range matters to me right now.
 
#45 ·
I'm rather late to this discussion, but have had several years experience of driving RWD cars in winter conditions, living in a hilly area. In reality I'm likely to see a maximum of two weeks in total of snowy conditions each year, but with both my wife and I working in the NHS, we need to be able to use our cars to get to work. No Public Transport, we have on a couple of occasions walked into work, 5 miles, not much fun.

So back in 2007 we got a 4wd as one of our cars and have had one ever since. They are good on normal road tyres but not perfect and you still have to exercise caution in snowy conditions.

A couple of years back I bought a RWD Alfa, and got a spare set of alloys and fitted winters on, they wheels were put onto the car in November and removed in March. They are most effective at 8c and below. All I can say is where I live, the winter tyres transformed the car and I felt completely safe driving on them. I did consider Cross Climates, but ruled them out.

I therefore would recommend you doing similar if you need to use the car regularly and the roads around you are not flat.

All our circumstances are different any many of you won't feel the need to use winter tyres, but for any of you with doubts about fitting them I'd say go for it.
 
#46 ·
A change of tyre can reduce your stopping distance by as much 40% particularly in cold wet or low grip conditions.
Now you can of course adapt your driving to allow for longer stopping distances and lower grip, but there's clear advantages to reduced stopping distances in an emergency. Then of course on wider tyres, heavy cars, an untreated snowy, icy hill can be a significant challenge.
 
#48 ·
After some heavy snow I bought some snow socks for the car, on the basis that if I could get the car out of the housing estate most of the rest of the 40 mile drive to Brighton every day would be fine.
That was in December 2013 - they're still unused.
So possibly not really worth getting winter tyres here on the South Coast.
 
#50 ·
Where I used to live you needed either snow tyres or chains on board from the 15th October and every year the carabinieri would do random checks and fine people if they didn't have them, which always acted as an effective reminder when it made the press..

As to rear wheel drive cars: if I decided to go skiing at Cervinia instead of my usual haunts there would always be some big, posh Milan plates in front going up at a painfully slow pace, even for a steady driver like myself in my beat up Fabia. Even occasionally chains on dry roads (wince).

I used to put a set of snows on my old Hyundai but fairly late on, before the annual ski trip, but as I'm in coastal Hampshire I'm not going to bother for my MG.
 
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